If you’re keen to deck the halls with Christmas decorations but put off by soaring bills, you’re certainly not alone. New GoCompare figures reveal that 14% of UK households are not hanging up their lights this year, amid concerns over looming electricity costs.
However, Martin Lewis’ MoneySavingExpert (MSE) has a festive light solution that might help to soften this blow. The financial gurus even claimed their savvy switch could cost just ‘1p every 12 hours’ for each 100 bulbs you own.
Surprisingly, this simply involves swapping traditional incandescent lights for LEDs, with the team highlighting a significant difference in cost between the two. In this week’s MSE newsletter, they wrote: “If you’ve got LED lights, it costs (a lot) less than 1p every hour (in fact it’s about 1p every 12 hours) per 100 bulbs you have.
“If you’ve got incandescent lights, it costs 1p every hour (so 12p every 12 hours) per 100 bulbs you have. So if you run a 100-bulb string of LED lights (which uses three watts of energy) for six hours a day for a month it’ll cost roughly 15p.”
Brits can distinguish between LED and incandescent lights by figuring out what their bulbs are made from. While the praised LEDs are typically made of plastic, the alternative incandescent lights are often housed in glass.
It may seem like a minor difference, but it’s actually a big reason why incandescent lights are deemed less efficient than LEDs. In fact, they reportedly use ‘less than 5% of their energy’ for producing visible light, while the remaining amount is lost as heat, according to Elesi.
This also explains why incandescent lights are generally hot to touch when left switched on for a long time, while plastic LEDs are much cooler overall. MSE further noted that LEDs last ‘up to 50 times longer’ too, so it’s definitely a worthwhile investment for those concerned about bills.
The newsletter’s simple advice was also echoed by money gurus on the Afforda team, who additionally encouraged the public to invest in light timers. These nifty tools will automatically switch off your lights at a certain time, so you don’t have to worry about it.
“Lots of us still use Christmas lights that are many years old, and these probably aren’t LED,” they said. “Buying new LED Christmas lights will be a relatively affordable and worthy investment, as LED lighting is much cheaper to run.
“Additionally, make sure all lights in your house have LED bulbs; if you have yet to make the jump to LED, now is a good time to start, as they will save you a lot of money going forward.”