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Unfortunately the LED Christmas light manufacturers haven't done the greatest job of making the lights look like standard incandescent--yet. Some of the colored versions are indistinguishable and have a much deeper color than their incandescent cohorts. For the white however, it's a very cool white, and as such I can understand people's negative reactions. In the next year or so the color-changing ones will become more affordable, and the 'white' will be much warmer.

Of course my house is lit mostly by LEDs, so I'm sorta biased.

I'll tell you what's "errie and cold" -- our 5 different strings of christmas lights that no longer work because of a burned out bulb, bad fuse, etc. that seem impossible to find/replace. And each manufacturer makes their bulbs/fuses slightly different, making replacing them that much more difficult.

That problem alone makes LED lights superior.

I hope they become even more popular next year. Still looking for white wire LED lights.

I haven't seen any I liked. IMO, terrible.

If you have one of those white (reusable!) plastic christmas trees, I think the cooler color of the white LEDs would go pretty well.

Urged on by my husband and a fit of environmental consciousness, we switched to LED exterior lights this year. I shared the feeling that LED lights are cold and eerie looking, but for power consumption they can't be beat. They now sell LED lights in three different shades of white. The ones labelled "warm white" aren't as warm-coloured as traditional twinkly white lights, but they are much, much better than the usual icy-bluish white LEDs.

I bought a set of multi-color mini-LED lights for my table top tree this year and I'm very happy with them. They don't seem to produce any heat which is good, but the colors are intense not washed out as some I've seen. The only downside is there is no "twinkling" option. Another set I saw did a fade from one color to the next which was not very effective.

do you really see your electric bill increase that much with regular christmas lights?

YAY!!!! The trees on Park Avenue near Grand Central have these lights on them and I love them. Everytime I walk by them I think "man, I gotta find out where they got these". Now I know. Thanks AT!

LED lights can easily last over 50,000 hours! That's good enough for me. Just think, never having to change a light bulb because they're plastic so they won't break, and they won't burn out.

Plus if you have lots of lights, the $aving$ are also pretty good.

'Warm White' will be an option in the future. It's starting to show up as an option in high-end landscape lighting due to the bluish tint of the 'White'.

I don't mind the colored-LED lights. There is a jumbo, cobalt blue LED wreath in front of Chelsea Market that is so vivid.

Depends on what you buy.

We bought two sets last year for our fake tree and the look just fine (but with a smaller light radius).

We bought another, different brand this year to put up in the living room and they were god awful neon white. They looked like HID automobile headlights.

Is anyone else bothered by the flickering of LED Christmas lights?

I don't notice it while looking straight at them, but when I turn my head or move my eyes it's obvious, and annoying. It occurs because the LEDs turn full on and full off 60 times per second and leave little dot-traces as I scan past them. Tungsten-element bulbs glow continuously and don't have this problem.

The blue-white bothers me a bit, too...probably just because it's new and I'm middle-aged...but not nearly as much as the flickering.

My parents have the red LED lights, and I think they look just as good as regular lights.

bathroom sconces.
That is how i would like to use LEDs. Over the bathtub.

No, I don't see a difference in my electric bill - then again, said bill is setup so I pay an average every month.

My little game with the electric company is to see how low I can get the bill. Plus, with LEDs, I won't have to worry about them going out for some strange reason. I'll get some in the future, for right now I am fine.

Since I only use 2 strands for my tree, I doubt the savings would be enough for me to justify paying at least 4x the cost of traditional lights for the LED ones. Maybe if I were lighting up a house or something. I've had my traditional lights for at least 3 years now, and haven't had to replace a bulb yet and I think they were $2 a strand, versus $10+ for LEDs.

Personally I find high electricity bills and global warming eerie and cold.I didn't do decorations this year. but if I do them next year, I'd definitely use LEDs over regular lights.

I sell the LED c7/c9 to commercial and consumers...I can tell you that on commercial applications the "cool clear" looks fantastic. In a residental application they are "so so" I just got my 2007 samples and the "warm white" looks very incandescent like and the color changing is VERY cool.

Happy Holiday's!!!

In response to the question of "do you really see your electric bill increase that much with regular christmas lights". LOL I put up about 20,000 lights with about 150 characters with spotlights. Normally a $600.00 electric bill for december. We only started to convert to led this year. Only about a quarter of the spotlights and half of the christmas light strings. I didn't have to replace one single led. We recieve an elctric bill right after christmas which normally has the $600. part. This year-----$234.
And, our electric company just implemented a 34% price increase. Change is good!!!! And, we love the colors.

I think it's better to buy LED ones once than pay every year large bills for electricity. Look this biggest christmas lights home decorations. There are people who pay $6k/month for the lights.