I love well done christmas lights, but I’m really fucking particular about them.
My absolute favorite is to have a both normal white lights, and those randomly twinkling color lights. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LXFLJP1/ is my go to for those.
Now, incandescent lights have some really nice things about them
-
The enclosure is painted glass. Glass has high hardness (scuffing resistance) has a much higher refractive index than most plastics. The combination of incandescent element and glass is just beautiful to look at up close. The things are like gems. In contrast led lights have noticeable imperfections and scratches, and I’m not a fan of the way they emit light.
-
The color balance. The overall color they give off is warm. Because it’s painted glass, the green and blue lights aren’t harsh or very noticeable. The red and magenta look like wine. In contrast, led christmas lights seem to all make use of eye searing blue, which completely fucks up the scene.
-
Twinkle lights. Incandescents make use of a heat based twinkling mechanism. This combined with normal manufacturing differences effectively make it fairly random. Additionally, because this affects the voltage across the line, ALL lights will have a subtle shifts in brightness. The effect is like flickering candlelight. In contrast, commercial LED lights seem to all be robotic with their twinkling.
Now the downsides
-
The fuckers like to burn out. Frankly if it weren’t for this I wouldn’t even be making this post
-
Comparatively high electricity use.
So has anyone come across any LED lights that manage to emulate the good points of traditional incandescent? Every year I look, but end up disgusted by everything I see.
Feel free to post about anything christmas light related.