The Cost of Christmas Lights
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Are you worried about the impact of Christmas Lights on your energy bills?
I'm putting our outside ones up a bit later this year.
We have already decorated our outside tree but with solar lights. It’s looking really good and all the neighbours get the benefit as well.
eyeballkerry Are you getting enough sun have them light up as long as you want? I have other solar lights in my garden and don't get much from them at this time of year.
I have never decorated the outside of the house for Christmas. I have also never put lights on the tree. Even before the price hikes I didn't see the point of paying for lights on the tree.
I do like to see houses decorated with lights but don’t do ours. The house opposite has flashing lights, I hate them 
We put lights on the tree but if they are on we don't put the house lights on. I think the method in my madness is it would cost about the same as the living room light would if it was on, so I put that out if the tree is on 
Most Christmas lights these days are LED and cost just a few pennies a day to run so I have no concern's about the few sets of lights we have.
Mango4 I guess it depends on a few things like how many lights you have, things like inflatables etc too, and how early you put them up/leave them on for. And of course for some people, those few pennies a day mount up and add a few pounds on to their energy bill when they are already struggling.
This is what Martin Lewis had to say and to be honest I don't think 18p per month or even £1.90 for a month is going to break the bank.
"If you've got LED lights - a string of one hundred - which is a pretty decent amount. If you were to have them on for six hours every day over a month would cost 18 pence roughly.
"So they're not very expensive to run."
He noted that while 18p a month is still money for struggling households, it could be a nice and affordable way to keep Christmas going.
Meanwhile, Martin's MoneySavingExpert newsletter found that a bigger set of lights, for example, a 32-metre string of outside lights would cost a total of £1.90 over the same period
Lynibis I guess it depends on a few things like how many lights you have, things like inflatables etc too, and how early you put them up/leave them on for. And of course for some people, those few pennies a day mount up and add a few pounds on to their energy bill when they are already struggling.
SamGoodship as Martin says a string of 100 6 hours a day is 18p per month so people can work out rough expenditure per lights. I.e. 200 lights would cost 36p per month, still only 1p a day.
Put another way, for the cost of 1 packet of cigarettes you could have 100 lights on every day of the year for about 15 hours per day. (Rough estimates done in head)
A alternative is to get battery operated lights rather than ones that plug into the mains.
KAW18 I did that some years ago and was changing batteries so much! It would probably be cheaper to do the mains lol
We don't decorate outside. So it's only inside on the tree. We are rubbish at remembering to plug it in
I love Christmas lights I put loads outside its only for a few weeks just a couple of hours a day I normally put them up 2 weeks before Christmas and 2 weeks after
Only lights we have are on the tree and they are fibre optic so barely use any electric
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