LED Holiday Lights: Decorate Green

As autumn days get shorter, its time to think about lighting options. LED holiday lights are the green way to decorate!

"LED" stands for "light emitting diodes." The technology uses a semiconductor light source, and is especially bright. Just what you need for lighting your home for the holidays.

Compared to traditional holiday light strands, LED holiday lights are cool to the touch and require considerably less energy to illuminate (about 1/10th of traditional incandescent holiday lights!) They will help you save money and the environment this holiday season.

Not only that, but LED lights are safer than most light strands used for decoration. As your Christmas tree dries out over the season, you don't have to worry (as much) about fire if you are using LED holiday lights.

LED lights are not just for holiday decorations, but their features can be especially appreciated during the busy and expensive season. Among other things:

• LED holiday lights use much less energy than incandescent alternatives
• LED lights have a longer lifetime, which means less frequent replacement
• LEDs are more durable and more reliable than ordinary holiday lights, as well
• Perhaps most importantly, if one LED light in a strand is not operational, the rest will still light up (that alone is worth the purchase price for me!)
  

For those of you that want to know... how do they work? Light-emitting diodes illuminate by operation of electrons releasing photon energy. Technically, the lights glow via electrolumninescense, and the color of the LED light is determined by the energy gap of the semiconductor (source: Wikipedia).

Its easy to use LED holiday lights, and there are a number of options for you to consider. Holiday light strands, icicle lights, snowflake lights and net lights are all available with LED lights. Choose colored or white lights, as well.

Most LED holiday light strands can be plugged in to run on electricity. Again, LED lights are "greener" than incandescent because they use a mere fraction of the energy.

There are also solar-powered LED holiday lights that are connected to a small solar panel device. Insert the solar panel into the ground and position it to absorb UV light during the day. At night, your LED holiday lights will automatically come on without the need to flip a switch, or pay for electricity. Even better, you don't need to look around for an outlet or fuss with extension cords when you use solar powered LED holiday lights.

Its truly eco-friendly lighting!

These days, you can find LED holiday lights at just about any retail outlet that sells holiday decorations. The cost of LED lights is comparable to traditional incandescent lighting strands, but will last longer.

Holiday LED lights are widely available at Amazon.com, as well as major hardware and home improvements stores like the Home Depot, Lowe’s, Costco, True Value Hardware and more.

In addition, you can easily compare and contrast LED holiday lights for sale at various websites:

• Super Bright LEDs
• The LED Light
• LED Light.com
• LED Lights.org
• Novelty Lights
• Light in the Box
• My LED Lighting Guide

Did you know that the famous Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, NYC, has been decorated with LED holiday lights for the past 3 years? That's right - more than 5 miles of light strands (over 30,000 individual lights) light up the holiday season in New York with energy-efficient LED lights.

The power to illuminate the iconic tree comes in part from the more than 300 solar panels installed on top of Rockefeller Center in 2007. The Rockefeller Christmas Tree is lit from 5:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. each day from the end of November through the first week of January. All those lights use less than 1/3 of the energy that would otherwise be required for incandescent bulbs.  The daily energy savings achieved by using LED holiday lights on the Rockefeller Christmas Tree is equivalent to the power typically used by a 2,000 square foot home!

In fact, consumers these days have many more LED holiday light options than before thanks in large part to the excitement about the Rockefeller Tree LED lights!

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