During the Christmas season we all tend to use a lot more lights outside and inside the house. The sun goes down earlier and if we are doing any thing outside or inside we need to have light to see. If you put up Christmas lights you will even use more power. Here are a few tips to make your home more energy efficient during the darker months and especially during Christmas.

Use the new light-emitting diode (LED) lights: LED lights use 95% less energy than the older style of light bulbs. That means you can replace 20 strings of LED lights in place of one string of the older bulbs. The life of the LED light is also ten times longer.

The other advantage that I have seen in using LED lights over the last few years is that they are very durable and not easy to break. In removing the outdoor lights last year the entire string fell from the roof and landed on the driveway. except for one cover getting knocked off nothing else broke. And I was able to easily re-attach the LED cover. If that would have been the old style of incandescent bulbs there would have been a lot of popping and broken glass on the driveway.

What to do with your hold strings of lights: Look for a place to recycle these lights. Some stores and municipalities might have programs where you can drop your old lights. When I purchase my LED lights a few years ago, Home Depot had a program where they would give you a coupon to purchase the new LED lights when you returned your old strings. It didn’t cover the full price but it made them a bit cheapier and got the old lights out of the garage.

Use a timer on your outdoor lights: A few years ago I plugged my lights in at dusk and then tried to remember to unplug them before going to paid. I now have timers and it is great. They go on and off automatically. I don’t need to go outside when it is cold and unplug them and I don’t forget to turn them off at night. This saves on power and also provides a form of security, since your lights are going on and off.

Timers can be a bit expensive and I purchased one timer a year until I had enough timers for all of the lights. This way I could also make sure the timer had the features I wanted before I purchased more. Letting it run the whole festive season is a good test. The other nice thing about LED lights is that you can run more lights through your timer since they use a lot less power.

Use solar powered Christmas lights: This year I have seen a few Christmas lights and markers that are powered using solar power. This is great, you push the stake or marker in the ground and let the sun do the rest. You can also place these lights in your planters or garden and they will add some colour to your yard until Spring is back in full bloom.

Use Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) outside and inside your house: You have probably heard and see the CFL lights. These are the new fluorescent lights that screw into your normal light socket. They are like the long fluorescent tubes except that they are much smaller and they curl in the same area as the older bulb.

They use about 2/3 less power than the incandescent bulb and create a lot less heat. Outside the front of our house we have a light over the door and two lights on either side of the garage. Once the old bulb burnt out I replace them with the new CFL light. I now run the three bulbs on the power that one of the older bulbs used. The CFL bulbs also last a lot longer so you don’t need to replace them as often.

For more information on using Light-Emitting Diode lights for your yard and garden, please read this article on using LED lights for landscape lighting.