"The type of lights you choose is very important! As a general rule, bigger bulbs use more electricity. For every hour they are turned on, the big (C-7) bulbs use between 4 and 10 watt-hours per bulb. This is at least 10 times the electricity used in an hour by 0.4 watt mini-light bulbs. The new Light Emitting Diode (LED) holiday lights are the biggest energy savers, drawing only a tenth as much electricity as mini-lights, at 0.04 watts per bulb! Of course, LED lights are slightly more expensive than mini-lights. For some people, the savings on their energy bill may not make up for the added cost. Besides saving energy, LED lights have some other advantages that may make their added cost seem worth it. When one bulb on a string of LED lights goes bad, the rest of the light string will still work. So there is no searching for that one bad light keeping the rest of the string from operating! Plus, LED bulbs should last at least 5 years, and they never get hot.

More lights require more energy. It only makes sense that your electricity use will go up as you add more strings of lights. Keep in mind that not all light strings are the same. Big (C-7) bulbs come in strings of 25, while mini-lights may have 35 to 200 bulbs per string, and LED lights may have 35 to 100 lights per string. The popular, icicle style light strings use mini-lights but because of their shape, usually require many more strings to cover the same distance as a regular string of mini-lights. The number of light strings used for decorating is a matter of taste. You can compare the amount of electricity that will be used by a string of each type of lights in an hour, by multiplying the number of watts per bulb by the number of bulbs per string:

A string of C-7 bulbs: 4 watts per bulb x 25 bulbs per string = 100 watts per hour

A string of mini-lights: 0.4 watts per bulb x 100 bulbs per string = 40 watts per hour

A string of LED lights: 0.04 watts per bulb x 100 bulbs per string = 4 watts per hour