Types of Lights

Christmas lights started out using the large lights consisting of C5/C7 bulbs (5W/7W). These are nice bright lights, but they consume a lot of power or about 3 times a set of 100 bulb mini lights. These bulbs can be turned on and dimmed as a whole string, and you are limited to the color of the bulbs.

C5/C7 Bulbs

The mini lights come in various colors and lengths, 35, 50, 70, 100, 150 are all common. However, the 35 and 70 foot lengths use 3.5V bulbs, and the 50/100/150 sets use 2.5V bulbs. I would recommend buying the same voltage bulbs to minimize confusion on which bulb to use. A set of 100 of these bulbs consumes about 0.42 amperes or 50W of power. These bulbs can only be turned on as a set or group.

Mini Incandscents

The mini lights and large bulbs can be bought with LED lights of various colors. They function the same as the incandescent strings, but require much less power. A string of 70 led lights requires about 5W of power. However, they cost more than standard light strings. Be sure that you pay attention to the color temperature when buying the white LED lights.

GE warm LED lights

The next step up in lighting is the dumb LED strips. These type of lights are powered off of DC power, which is generally either 5V or 12 V. These strips can also be all one color that can be dimmed together, or they can be a RGB strip that is three channels, one for each of the red, green and blue colors in each bulb. This strip can be controlled to output any color along the whole strip.

Dumb LED strip

The last type of light is what is called a smart string of LED’s, each of the lights within the string can be any color and brightness. These type of strings can be used to display images and are only limited by your imagination. These lights are also powered of either 5V or 12Vdc power.

Smart LED's strip

Color Temperature

Color Temperature

Color temperature is important for LED lighting. Normal Household light bulbs have a color temperature of around 2700 Kelvin. These bulbs have a nice yellow glow that is very familiar and comfortable. The noon time daylight or the color of a flash bulb is about 5000 Kelvin. This is great for taking pictures and one would think that it would be perfect for lighting. However, the color of 5000-6000 Kelvin is very similar to the new headlights on some cars, which is blue/white in color, which can be unpleasant. It is less expensive to make the cool white LED's than the warm LED's. So the cool white LED lights are more common. When purchasing LED light strings ensure that you are buying the desired color temperature.

Last edited May 25th, 2015