Some Thoughts on Outdoor Christmas Lights

Personally, one of my favorite times of year is the holiday season.  Starting around October, my mind starts buzzing with outdoor Christmas light ideas.  Of course I enjoy all of the wonderful family bonding experiences, but ever since I was a kid, I've loved Christmas lights.  When I was little I always wanted my Dad to put up more.  I don't know that there ever could have been enough outdoor Christmas lights for me.


Now that I'm older my only limitation has been having enough available electrical outlets to safely hook up the lights I can see in my imagination.  I always try to time it just right so that I can get my outdoor Christmas lights put up on one of the last warm days around Thanksgiving.  Putting up Christmas lights is a much more enjoyable task when you can actually feel your fingers.

I've never come close to those fabulous Christmas light shows you see getting shown off on Youtube every year, so I thought I'd start doing some research.  I've come across a book that might help people looking for outdoor Christmas light ideas.  It is called Let There Be Lights!: A Beginner's Guide to Outdoor Christmas Decorating If you are looking for the best ways to decorate the outside of your home for the holidays, you might find that it is just what you need.

Personally, one thing I've always tried to do is be a little bit different from everyone else.  It seems like every year there is some new and trendy style of outdoor Christmas lighting that everyone in my neighborhood flocks to put up.  For a while there, it was the all white icicle lights that hung off of every gutter in the neighborhood.  They certainly look nice, but when everyone else is using the exact same lighting scheme, it gets kind of boring for me.  Before that, loads of people around here purchased the net lights that fit over top of evergreen bushes.  I did like them a lot, but we don't have any bushes that they could fit over, so they were never a consideration.

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CHRISTMAS ROPE LIGHT MULTI 12 INDOOR OUTDOOR XMAS    US $10.22

Danson Decor OUTDOOR LIGHT NET blue 4x6 X7258B xmas    US $8.95

OUTDOOR LED LIGHT SET 35 BLUE COLOURED CHRISTMAS 12    US $11.20

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Outdoor Lights Home

I think there is an area of outdoor lighting that gets ignored a lot because it is not something that most of us grew up with around our own homes.  I am talking about solar garden lights.  Even garden lighting in general was not really thought of a lot previously.  Most people's property was just plain old dark at night.  There was not anything done to show off the property.  The standard porch light and maybe a lamp post were about all you ever saw.  With improvements in lighting technology, things have changed.  People who are taking the time to fix up the property want it to look good all of the time, not just when the sun is up.  Outdoor solar garden lights are now a popular option for homeowners.


Many homeowners spent countless hours toiling in their yards, building beautiful gardens that look absolutely splendid during the daylight hours.  Most of the time, when the sun goes down, this beautiful addition to the landscape is lost to the darkness until morning comes around again to illuminate it.

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60 LED Blue Solar Power Outdoor Garden String Lights    US $7.48

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Because the lights are powered by the sun's energy, there is no need to hire an electrician to install these lights.  That in itself can amount to a substantial savings in money.  Add that savings to the money saved on your electric bill and these lights are an even better bargain.

Solar garden lights can easily be adjusted to suit whatever lighting designs you prefer.  Because they do not depend on being connected to a power supply, you can set them up wherever you like them in your garden.  If you want to use them to accent shapes in your garden, you might place them in the middle of some larger features like landscape rocks.  If you have night blooming flowers that you would like to show off, place the lights close enough so that they can be seen by people passing by your property.  In the past, solar lighting was not too impressive.  The lights were quite dim and did not actually give off much visible light.  LED solar garden lights have really done a great job opening up new lighting possibilities.  They are efficient to run and can put off considerable amounts of light for you.  A very nice feature that is available now is the ability to have different colored lights highlighting your garden area or walkway.  The changing of the colors can make a dramatic difference in the overall look of the evening landscape.  You can choose from different sizes of lighting fixtures as well.  Choose lights that will accent the lay of the land and not stand out during the daylight hours.  They should be as unobtrusive as possible.  You want them to get noticed during the evening hours, not when it is still light outside.

In previous years it could be difficult to find these solar garden lights, and when you did find them, the cost was often prohibitive.  Now, with such a strong emphasis being placed on saving our environment, the cost of these lights has dropped substantially, they are also much more readily available to buy.  If you are looking to light your garden area or just your landscaping in general, the advantages of solar garden lights cannot be ignored.

Outdoor Lights Home

There are many people who spend thousands of dollars fabulously decorating the interiors of their homes without ever getting a second thought to outdoor lights or outdoor lighting.  All of their hard work and landscaping and beautifying their property goes into hiding once the sun goes down.  Their lack of lighting only comes to their attention when they decide to entertain friends or family during evening hours.  People wander outside and are forced to hover around a single porch light like moths.  With all of the options available in outdoor lighting today, it certainly does not have to be like this.  A variety of reasonably priced outdoor lights are available that can enhance your home's evening landscape and make your home look inviting during any time of day.


There are so many types of outdoor lighting fixtures available, that I can only briefly touched on some of them in this article.  Exploring websites devoted to outdoor lighting or visiting a local retail outlet will really open your eyes to how dark and boring you may have left the exterior of your home.  There are low voltage lights, solar powered lights and other alternate lighting options available that you may not even know exist.  Each of these can open up news ways of decorating your evening landscape in ways you may never have dreamed of before.  The same objects that are points of interest during the daylight hours can be highlighted with creative outdoor lighting in a variety of ways.  Evening is a great time to explore ways to decorate that enhance shapes and designs on your property.

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Other outdoor lighting options include outdoor string lights and outdoor party lights.  These are sometimes lumped together but there are a huge variety of string lights available in many styles including solar powered lights which can give a soft glow and save you money on your energy bills.  Usually, these lights are used as accents, but they can also be used in quantity to light entire areas if you are entertaining a large group of people.


Getting electricity to your outdoor lighting can sometimes present the challenge.  In these situations, you should consider either solar lighting, as mentioned above, or other options such as lights powered by rechargeable batteries.  If you have not explored your outdoor lighting options recently, you should consider looking at what is now available.  A single porch light and a flood light over the driveway may be functional for getting from your car to your front door, but there are so many other reasonably priced options available today that it is definitely worth your time to check them out.

Outdoor Lights Home

If you're the type of person who enjoys putting up a lot of outdoor Christmas lights, then you have probably experienced the mysterious phenomenon of the lights you used last year suddenly not working when you unpack them.  I honestly do not know why or how this happens.  In previous years, I have spent a lot of time carefully putting the holiday lights away without damaging them and then storing them in a safe dry place, only to find the next year at 1/4 to 1/2 them no longer work.  For me, this is a mystery on par with where the matching socks go during the time between washing machine and folding laundry.


There are many kinds of outdoor string lights sold for decorating at the holidays.  At one time or another, I have probably owned most of them.  My personal preference is for simple multicolored string lights in smaller sizes and multiple quantities.  On occasion I have also used outdoor flood lights with red and green and white light bulbs in them to highlight doorways or a manger scene.

Depending on when you are reading this, your options for finding good values on Christmas lights may be limited.  As any experience shopper knows, one of the best ways to save money is to purchase items that are out of season.  I'm trying to make sure that every year I go out after the Christmas holiday and look for deals on outdoor Christmas lights, as retailers make their push to clear the shelves to make room for Valentine's Day merchandise.  Using this strategy, it is not uncommon to be able to stock up at prices that sometimes are more than 50% off of regular retail.

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String C9 25 Bulb Christmas Tree Outdoor Lights    US $.99

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Obviously shopping at yard sales puts a limit on your selection.  The strategy of shopping at times other than right before Christmas can still help you if you have your mind set on one particular type of outdoor Christmas lights.  These are easily found on web sites devoted to outdoor lighting or even on eBay.  With such a huge variety of lights available at low prices, you should be able to put together quite an impressive outdoor lights display.  As always, follow the recommendations of the manufacturer and light safely.  Don't overload outlets and update your electrical service to keep things as safe as possible.

By the way, just an interesting note for you.  I learned a couple of years ago that some squirrels seem to enjoy chewing the wires of Christmas lights.  I have no idea what they were trying to do, but we had squirrels chew through our storage boxes and proceed to demolish about ten of the long, multi-function strings we had put away in storage.  We had used cardboard boxes, which turned out to be a mistake.  If you are going to store lights, get some heavy duty plastic bins.  That seemed to do the trick for us.

Outdoor Lights Home

A lot of people are going green when they install new outdoor lighting fixtures around their homes.  This may or may not apply to you, but outdoor solar lights should be something you consider for use around your house.  They can save you money, are very easy to install and move, and provide a very nice, soft lighting effect for the landscaping and walkways in your yard.  As outdoor lights go, they are a great utility player.


Probably the most commonly seen kind of solar lights are the kind that push into the ground using a stake to hold each light in place.  You'll usually see these spaced evenly along either side of the sidewalk leading up to the front door of a house.  These can also be placed along the edges of driveways or retaining walls next driveways.  Honestly, because of their extreme portability and ease of installation, these lights can go just about anywhere.  Some people even use them for edging around decorative planting beds that they want to highlight during the evening hours as well as in the daylight.  This type of lighting makes it possible to illuminate beds or decorative elements such as ponds that might be too far removed from an electrical source to make lighting them practical otherwise.

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Solar outdoor string lights are available in a wide array of colors to suit your personal tastes and landscaping needs.  My neighbor just put some in this weekend that are multi-colored.  They are in a pattern of green,blue, white and red.  They do not put out a lot of light, but they do look nice in the arrangement he has chosen.  They give the impression of over-sized outdoor Christmas lights with their soft glow.

You can shop around for these lights and look for bargains, but most likely they are going to end up costing more than traditional outdoor lights that plug into a socket (this may vary by region).  This higher initial cost however, may be offset by taking into consideration the long-term savings as these lights store the energy from naturally occurring sunlight day after day.

Outdoor Lights Home

As the name implies, outdoor string lights are designed to be used outdoors.  These decorative strings of lights are often placed around patios or screened in porches as a way to enhance a party's atmosphere.  Sometimes, when used for parties or celebrations such as weddings or graduations, they are strung in multiple rows resulting in a dazzling decorative effect.  A very nice feature of these lights is that they do not require any special outdoor lighting fixtures.


Outdoor string lights are not just strings of Christmas lights given a new name to sell in different seasons.  There is an amazing variety of styles and sizes available to suit just about any outdoor decorating need.  Where flood lights tend to make a very bold statement, string lights are a much more subtle type of accent lighting.  Of course when multiple strings are used together the results can be anything but subtle.  This is  especially true if bold colors and larger bulbs are used for decorating.

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The impression you make with your outdoor string lights is really up to you and your imagination.  Obviously choosing lights that look like delicate paper lanterns and stringing them along the ceiling, will result in a different feel than multicolored LED string lights surrounding a dance party.  The choices available for this type of lighting are extremely varied.

Just as there are different styles in this type of lighting, the cost of these lights will depend on what you decide you need.  Also, if you decide to put a large number of outdoor string lights up, your cost will increase significantly.

An important consideration when decorating with these lights, is making sure that you have adequate electrical outlets available.  You should follow the manufacturer's instructions regarding what the safe load is for each outlet.

Some people have a real decorator's eye when it comes to outdoor lights and outdoor lighting.  Others are quite clueless (but that's OK).  Just remember before you go out and buy a truckload of these lights, that sometimes, less is more.  For some events you may want to use many strings together as the primary source of light, but some of these outdoor string lights really strut their stuff best when used as an accent.  However you plan to use them, with a little bit of care, it is hard to go wrong with outdoor string lights.

Outdoor Lights Home

Outdoor flood lights are often installed for the sake of security.  But form can also complement function when these lights are added to your landscape.  Many people think that flood lights can only be installed at the corners of a house to blast dark areas with light when the sun goes down.  When you use your imagination and creativity, you'll find that flood lights can also serve very well as a way to accent certain areas of your property that you might want to show off.


If you worked hard to develop a flower garden or if you have installed a beautiful walkway, why not let people see it at night as well as in the daytime?  For gardens, this might actually serve to help keep out pests that have destroyed your hard work in previous years.  Steps and walkways are naturally safer for guests when they can see where they're going.

Having outdoor lights gives you the option to use your property for many more hours during the day.  Lighting up a large area of your lawn can allow the children to safely play outside by themselves or with friends during the warm summer months.  When children want to "camp out", everyone can feel more secure knowing that they are in a well lit area while still being outside "camping."

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Finally, outdoor flood lights certainly can serve well as a security measure for your property.  Outdoor lighting fixtures can be fitted with motion sensing units which will turn on the lights if somebody gets too close to your property when you do not want them to be there.  Given a choice between a well lit house and one that is cast in constant shadow and darkness during the evening hours, a criminal would almost certainly choose to avoid the area where he is likely to be seen.

Whether you're looking for outdoor lights simply for security reasons or as a way to make your house look a little bit nicer at night, modern outdoor lights can certainly fill your needs.  Modern options in low voltage outdoor lighting also can help to make these lights much more economical and energy efficient to keep lit.  With a variety of shapes, sizes, and styles available, outdoor flood lights today can be a wonderful blend of form and function that enhance and beautify your property.

Outdoor Lights Home