LED's vs. Traditional Lights

Are you going to save money by using LEDs instead of traditional Christmas Lights?

Let me first start out by saying that we love the LED technology and try to use it as often as we can in our business. With that being said you must still look at the product for yourself and say does it make sense for me.

The answer is it depends; there are many factors to take into account when answering this question. You need to look at the pricing of the 2 products, light output(is an LED going to illuminate as brightly as the traditional light it is replacing), energy costs in your area, the length of time you’ll have your lights on, and the typical life span of the 2 products.

Taking into consideration all these different factors we’ve tried to answer this question from the perspective of an average homeowner decorating their home. Review the costs below and see if you think it would make sense for you to use LEDs or Traditional Lights

The following data points were used to reach our calculations:

Cost of lights are(listed below) based on:

• 250ft of lights for the house (this is enough lights to easily do the gutters of a 2 story home between 2800 – 3800 sq ft)
• 12 sets of mini lights for the yard(this is enough for two regular size trees)

Power is based on 35 days, 6 hrs a day at $.08 cents per Kwh

Product life span

• 3 years for traditional lights(After this many years you’ll probably need to replace all your lights)
• 6 years for LED Lights (After this many years you’ll probably need to replace all your lights)
• The LED products used in this comparison would be a fairly equal replacement product for their incandescent counterparts.

While LEDs consume much less energy than traditional Christmas lights their higher price tag makes them more expensive for the average home owner. The technology is still new and therefore expensive. However, the prices will continue to fall, which at some point will make them the ideal light. At this point the choice is up to the customer.