Money saving expert Martin Lewis has revealed how much it really costs to run your Christmas lights in December.
It’s the first week of December this week and many households up and down the UK have already begun to deck the halls with boughs of holly and of course, Christmas lights.
The twinkling fairy lights are a popular choice for Christmas trees, hallways and even across roofs and gardens as everyone starts to spread the festive cheer through the medium of LED bulbs.
But with energy bills having gone up in October, and rising again on January 1, many will be wondering whether ‘all is bright’ is really the brightest idea.
Fortunately, Martin Lewis did the maths and came up with the answer on the latest episode of The Martin Lewis Money Show Live on ITV1 and ITVX. He advised that, contrary to popular belief, Christmas lights are actually very cheap to run as long as you get the right type of lights.
LED lights are low-cost to run and won’t make any noticeable difference to your energy bill come the end of the month, but old fashioned incandescent lights might if you have a lot of them.
Martin Lewis said: “How much do Christmas lights cost to run? Here’s my rule of thumb based on the new energy price cap. LED lights, 1p per 12 hours per 100 bulbs, incandescents, 12 times as much, so 12p per 12 hours per 100 bulbs.
“So if you run them for six hours, per 100 bulbs, then it’s roughly 15p a month on LED, £1.80 on incandescents, LED a lot cheaper, really not that expensive to run. If you want your sparkles, you can have your sparkles even with my blessing this year.”
Incandescent bulbs are the old style of light bulbs which were banned in 2016.
But if you have an old hand-me-down set of lights, they could be using the old incandescent style which is costing you slightly more.
In 2016, the EU set out a timetable to withdraw incandescent bulbs from sale to save energy costs. It’s still legal to buy existing stock but once they’re all gone, it’s impossible to buy more because they no longer make them.
if you’ve bought a new set of lights since 2016, you needn’t worry as these will be the new, cheaper to run lights.
