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Cool Idea: LED Lights Last Longer, Run Cheaply

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By CAROL POLSKY Newsday

Published: December 17, 2007

MELVILLE, N.Y. - It's official: The White House Christmas tree is "green." So is the tree at Rockefeller Center.

Those trees glow with light-emitting diodes - or LEDs - rather than the traditional bulbs of incandescent lights.

Like driving a hybrid car and using recycled paper, stringing up LED Christmas lights is becoming a de rigueur gesture of eco-friendliness and environmental responsibility.

Retailers from high-end specialty shops to The Home Depot and Target say the lights are selling steadily. This year, customers have more LED offerings to choose from, and many seem willing to pay their extra cost in exchange for their energy efficiency, vivid colors and longer lifespan.

Traditional incandescent lights glow when electricity passes through a filament in a glass bulb. Their colors come from the tint in the glass bulb.

LEDs, on the other hand, are semiconductor chips, diodes that glow with the movement of electrons when activated by electricity. They don't burn out, they don't break, and they don't get hot. Their red, blue or green color comes from a material at the diode's base, while white is achieved when strands of the three colors are combined.

"We have more styles this year than we ever had, as far as the shape of the bulb, the sizes, the colors," says Carrie Leopold, store director at Dobbs & Eber in Oyster Bay, N.Y.

"There are stars, acorn shapes, balls, snowflakes and LED lights in strings on garlands."

The cost certainly is a factor in LED sales: At Home Depot, a string of 100 clear minilights in traditional bulbs sells for $2, while 50 LED lights were on sale for $7.99. And at Wal-Mart, a 7-foot-tall prelit tree costs $59.84 with traditional lights and $92.84 with LEDs.

On the other hand, some Home Depot customers came in asking for the "bright lights" - meaning the vivid LEDS, says Sheriee Bowman, a New York metro area spokeswoman for the chain.

"The LED Christmas lights are 80 percent more efficient is how we are advertising it," she says, "and they last up to 20,000 hours or the equivalent of up to 20 years.

"We have 11 different styles for both indoor and outdoor use, and they are cool to the touch. ... Customers are coming in and asking for them. It's one of our most popular Christmas items this year."

Home Depot, as well as other big stores, offers interactive displays where customers can light both types of bulbs for comparison. Cherie Hlady, a customer at Dobbs & Eder, says she sees little difference and would be happy with the LEDs.

Josh Thomas, a spokesman for Target, says the LED lights in those stores are selling "steadily."

The chain also offers outdoor figurines in LED lights, such as a buck outlined in blue.

Neal Lewis, executive director of the Long Island Neighborhood Network, an East Farmingdale, N.Y., environmental group, says the LEDs have caught on over the past two years.

LEDs are cool to the touch, lessening danger of burns or fire. Up to 20 strings of them can be put together. A string of them doesn't cease functioning if one light is defective. And they cost pennies to use during a season, versus about $4.50 for a typical string of regular lights.

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