Go All-LED This Holiday Season to Save Money and Energy

This year, make your holiday a more eco-friendly one by decorating for the season with LED lights. Using LED light strings for your indoor and outdoor displays allows you to consume up to 80 percent less energy than traditional incandescents.

With the holidays approaching, you might be adding quite a bit more light inside and outside your home. This year, make your holiday a more eco-friendly one by decorating for the season with LED lights. Using LED light strings for your indoor and outdoor displays allows you to consume up to 80 percent less energy than traditional incandescents.

And LED holiday lights not only save energy, but money as well. According to the Alliance to Save Energy, a household burning 10 strands of lights with 100 lights per strand, eight hours a day for a month, would spend almost $175 for large, incandescent bulbs, about $11 for traditional mini-lights, and just over $1 for LEDs (based on $0.1003 per kilowatt-hour).

Worried that LEDs won’t create that same holiday magic? When it comes to holiday rituals like decking the halls, many people are reluctant to change what they’ve always done. But decorating with LED lights instead of incandescents doesn’t have to be a break with tradition. You can still get that retro-shaped C9 bulb that many people know and love from Christmases past. The 35-Light LED Multi-Color Smooth C9 Light Set from Home Accents Holiday, available at The Home Depot, lets you save by decorating at a fraction of the energy cost of incandescent bulbs while still providing the familiar look of the C9 bulb.

Not sure what to do with those old string lights? From November 5 through 15, The Home Depot is having its seventh annual Eco Options Holiday Light Exchange Program. Recycle your old, inefficient incandescent holiday lights at The Home Depot and receive a discount on the purchase of energy efficient LED holiday lights. And by participating in the program, you can be part of something big. From 2008 to 2013, Home Depot has recycled 1.7 million strings — 1.5 million pounds of lights.

Sometimes holiday decorating can seem like a competitive sport. If you want to go bigger than just light strings, consider doing a DIY light show or adding a projection light to your front yard. Home Depot has an LED projection light for $19.98. It uses energy-efficient LED lights to create a beautiful snow flake effect on your home’s exterior.

Eco-friendly holiday lights are a gift to the planet — and your wallet. By festooning your home with LED light strings instead of incandescents, you can save money and energy while still creating a festive display that will wow the neighbors and recall merry Christmases of yore.