LED lights are new favorites for the holidays

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LED lights

Colleen Abercrombie-Castle and her daughters Madeline, 6, left, and Samantha, 4, put up solar LED Christmas lights at their Niskayuna home. Colleen says she has been pleased with the lights' glow thus far.

Amid the forest of cheerily lit artificial Christmas trees at the Hewitt’s Garden Center in Glenville is a rack of Holiday Specs.

They look like the disposable 3-D glasses handed out at movie theaters, and if you put on a pair, they transform the halos around the trees’ lights into holographic images of angels and Santas, snowflakes and snowmen.

The specs are fun to look through, but I couldn’t help but wish there were also some sunglasses for sale on that rack. A nearby tree adorned with multicolored LED mini lights blazed so brightly it was hard to look at it without squinting.

Although they’ve been on the radar since the late 1990s, those eye-catching LED Christmas lights just started to gain popularity in our area during the past few holiday seasons. Thanks to declining prices and a constantly expanding selection, the innovative illuminators are becoming a mainstay in more and more holiday decorating schemes.

INNOVATIVE ILLUMINATION

LED — short for light-emitting diodes — is a technology that involves tiny semiconductor chips, similar to those used in computers. The chips, which are encapsulated in solid epoxy plastic, directly convert electricity to light without the use of a filament or glass bulb.

“Standard [incandescent] miniature lights are so complicated. It’s such a series of fragile copper wires, and the shunts to the bulbs and the bulbs can break. There’s just so much that can go wrong. With these [LEDs], that’s not the case,” explains Chris Berninger, manager of the Glenville Hewitt’s.

“The Future of Holiday Lighting” exclaims a Hewitt’s sign posted next to shelves stacked with boxes of LED Christmas lights. Judging from the rate at which they’re being snapped up by consumers, that sign seems right on the money. Berninger says he has seen sales increase steadily during the three years that the Glenville Hewitt’s has been offering LED holiday lights. Last year, their inventory nearly sold out, he reports, and this year, their LED stock has been increased by 25 to 30 percent.

Christmas Lights Etc., an online retailer of Christmas trees, decorations and holiday lighting, is already reporting a 50 percent increase in annual sales of LED Christmas lights over 2007.

And this year, for the first time, all 56 U.S. state and territory Christmas trees will be powered by LED lights.

Faddegon’s Nursery in Latham offered LED Christmas lights for the first time last season. “I would say we sold maybe 20, 25 percent of our stock,” estimates garden center supervisor Randy Herrington. “But I think this is the year they’re certainly going to gain in popularity. They’ve come down in price probably by 20 or 30 percent.”

A standard fifty-count LED mini-light strand can be purchased for about $10; prices increase according to style, quality and strand length.

THE BRIGHT SIDE

The advantages of LED holiday lights are undeniable: They are up to 90 percent more efficient than traditional, incandescent holiday lights; the bulbs are nearly impossible to break; they pose a minimal fire hazard since they remain cool to the touch; and are rated for 50,000 hours of use or more, while standard incandescent lights typically only last for 2,000.

“They could last 20, 30 years,” says Berninger. “They never burn out. They just kind of fade over time, but very, very little.”

Sherry Tomasky of Glenville purchased LED Christmas lights for the first time last year. “They were more expensive than the same type of lights that weren’t LED, but I justified it by knowing that I would save money down the road,” she says.

Tomasky chose large, multi-colored bulbs. “I thought they would look fun on the tree, the big, old fashioned-type bulbs,” she says. But she was less than impressed with the ambiance they offered. “The colors just were not at all what I expected. They weren’t very bright. We put our tree in a corner and I love to be able to see the lights from outside as I’m pulling around the corner onto our street but they were so dim that I couldn’t see them.”

Colleen Abercrombie-Castle of Niskayuna recently bought solar LED lights to hang on the fence at the end of her driveway. Enticed by the promise of brighter-than-incandescent lights and the convenient solar feature, she bought two strands at an area box store for $20 each. “They look great and the solar panel has worked even though it has been only rainy and cloudy skies,” she says.

WIDENING SPECTRUM

This season, LED lights are available in an expanded range of varieties. Some bulbs flash, some twinkle, others even change colors, from red to white to green and back again. “The LEDs really throw a nice, bright light, a different light than the traditional ones do,” says Herrington.

Color selection has improved as well, say Berninger. “The actual white last year was almost a little bluish. This year, it’s more of a bright white and this year they also came out with a warm white, which is a little yellowish,” he notes. Bulb sizes range from large, old-fashioned-style C-9s to tiny wide-angle bulbs that look like Lite Brite pegs.

The bulbs also come shaped like snowflakes, Christmas trees and stars. They come encapsulated in clear plastic rope, arranged to hang like icicles and embedded in nets that can be draped over bushes. Flickering yellow LED bulbs are now available for window candles, and short, battery-operated LED light strands are in stock for wreaths. “With a standard 20-light miniature light set, the battery might give you a couple days or a week at best. A battery-operated LED set can go a whole season,” notes Berninger.

Herrington encourages consumers to read the instructions before starting to string up LED lights, because recommendations for use vary. “The ones I carry say only three strands should be put end-to-end,” he notes.

Christmas Lights Etc. advertises Premium Mini Ice LED strands that allow end-to-end connection of up to 43 sets. The professional-grade multi-colored mini LED lights sold by online retailer Holiday LEDs allow end-to-end connection of up to 125 strings.

WHAT’S THE CATCH?

LED Christmas lights are efficient, hard to break and last almost forever. So what’s the catch? There doesn’t appear to be one, really, but the latest in holiday lighting does have a few slight drawbacks. One is that when used outside, the cool-burning bulbs don’t melt the snow like incandescent ones do, so after a snowstorm, it might be necessary to get out there with a broom to brush off the lights.

Connecting LED strands with their incandescent counterparts may also cause problems. Holiday LEDs cautions, on its Web site, against mixing and matching the two types of lights because incandescent strands draw so much more power that there’s a good chance they will blow the fuse in the LED string.

Also, the light that LEDs emit is not the same as that from incandescent bulbs. “You probably wouldn’t want a set of LEDs on a shrub and a miniature [incandescent] strand on a shrub next to it because they would be somewhat different,” says Berninger.

And then there’s the brightness factor. Wide angle LEDs, the brightest ones offered, might seem too dazzling for the living room. “A lot of sets we sell aren’t that intense,” notes Berninger. “They have a little cap on them, which tones it down a bit.” The capped ones, however, as Tomasky discovered, might not seem bright enough. But discerning holiday decorators need not resort to sunglasses or holographic Holiday Specs to enjoy the look of LED lights.

As technology advances, selection will continue to increase. If the perfect strand isn’t out there this season, you might want to wait for next year’s innovations.