Many people probably feel it isn’t Christmas without some decorations. If you’re thinking about digging your home decorations out of storage, it’s worth taking a moment to tot up the cost of your Christmas cheer.
Without wanting to come across as a scrooge, conventional Christmas lights are just too expensive in terms of running costs and energy consumption.
If you (or your kids) have your hearts set on festive illuminations, consider buying LED lights. According to the Energy Saving Trust, LEDs consume 90% less electricity than conventional bulbs. They last longer and are more durable (no filaments) too. Although the initial outlay might be greater, LEDs make sense as a long-term investment.
A fibre optic decoration (like one of these) is another option. Perhaps not to everyone’s taste, they do however run off just a single source bulb. Just one source can light thousands of fibre optic tips. Currently, these bulbs tend to be halogens.
Fibre optics that feed off an LED source bulb would be even better. However, we have not found anything that fits the bill so far.
Finally, a neat little trick to reducing the number of bulbs you use, is to hang up reflective decorations. These will amplify the effect of your lights. Buy or make them yourself.
Image by Flickr user Bitterjug. Published under the Creative Commons license.
3 Comments
Surely it’s still better to use old lights again then to fork out for new ones - not only because of the expense, but also because you’ve made one thing redundant (give it to someone else) and taken something new off the shelf (did you really need it?).
If you’re buying new lights, LEDs are the way to go. But, yes, it probably would be a good idea to use the old lights until they give out.
But probably worth considering the wasted lights if you buy new ones. You don’t want to throw out perfectly good lights if you don’t have to.