When it’s time to deck your home with Christmas lights, the kind of bulb you choose can make a big difference in your electric bill!
The True Cost of Christmas Lights
Are you still using old strands of incandescent bulbs that have seen better days?
Once you see this chart below, you may want to consider switching to the newer LED lights.
The Washington Post crunched the numbers back in 2017. Its test scenario: running Christmas lights 12 hours a day for 45 days at a cost of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour. (That’s roughly equivalent to putting your lights up the day after Thanksgiving and taking them down right after New Year’s Day.)
Here’s the estimated total cost depending on what kind of bulbs (and how many) you use:
| Type of Light | Cost to Run |
| 1 string of 25 incandescent C9 bulbs | $15.12 |
| 1 string of 25 LED C9 bulbs | 21 cents |
| 4 strings of 25 incandescent C9 bulbs | ~$60 |
| 4 strings of 25 LED C9 bulbs | ~80 cents |
| 1 string of 100 incandescent minis | $3.53 |
| 1 string of 100 LED minis | 41 cents |
| 10 strings of 100 incandescent minis | ~$35 |
| 10 strings of 100 LED minis | ~$4 |
If you opt for 10 strings of LED lights instead of incandescent bulbs, you’d save $30 this holiday season. It might not seem like much, but $30 could pay for a portion of your grocery bill, four months of a Disney+ subscription, or you could put the money directly into a savings account to buffer your savings.
