November 30, 2009

green holiday lights


Well, actually blue holiday lights would be a more accurate title. I bought some new "icicle" lights to decorate our front windows. These new lights are LED, and I expected them to have more of a cool blue cast to them, and they surely do!

I truthfully prefer the old lights, which sadly were no longer up to the job. I thought I was being picky about color temperature and such, but even my kids asked me why the lights were blue! We only use one strand of lights outside, but the package promises up to 76% energy savings. Every little bit helps, right? I've noticed in past years that our December energy bill is much higher, and I don't think it is from the furnace (ah, holidays in San Francisco). I know, I know, using no decorative lights at all would save even more energy. But you see, without some decorations, it really doesn't look much like Christmas in this city at all.

While I'm happy to try these LED lights outside, I don't think I could take the look of them on our tree.

3 comments:

Melissa said...

I love the LED light strings outdoors. The cool icy look is perfect on a cold winter night. I plan to keep mine up all year!

Lisa B said...

Hey, where's mom go green?

MarkM said...

Hey Mom!

I work for a LED import company based in San Francisco. www.smartstrands.com So I feel like I know a little bit about what your talking about.

The tech for making LED's has been around for last 40 years give or take. But its only in the last five that people have been trying to make LEDs with a realistic white color. Which it turns out is really hard. Then to make 100,000 of them all the same color is harder again.

Anyway they are getting better every year, and they are substantially better for the environment than any of the alternatives out there.