Christmas Lights Advice

I’m frequently asked, “So, what’s the difference between residential and commercial led christmas lights and what should I choose?”

LED Christmas lights from HOliday Creations come in two different version. What style you choose depends on your project, installation requirements, availability and your pocketbook.

Standard LED Christmas lights come with a standard male/female plug set and can be connected up to an average of 60 sets in series. These UL rated sets are great for indoor projects, crafts and HOliday decorating. In the mini light versions of these sets – razzberry and strawberry – the LEDs are spaced 4 inches apart and come in 35 and 70 LEDs to the set. Superrazz or G12 residential sets are 6 inchesa apart and the bigger C7 and C9 Sets are spaced 8 inches apart. This 8 inch spacing is one of the biggest differences between residential and commercial C7 and C9 sets because the commercial versions are 12 inches apart.

You can use traditional splitters and extension cords to install your residential light sets.

Residential sets are frequently the best choice is you want to place lighted objects in multi places in a room and sheer number of sets is not an issue.

For external applications and those where flexibility of installation and weather resistance is a high priority, commercial LED Chrsitmas lights might be a better solution for your project. Designed with proprietary 3-wire engineering, Holiday Creation LED light sets can be run up to 125 sets is a single run. If you are looking at C7 or C9 sets which are manufactured with 12 inch spacing, that is an incredible 3125 of LEDs run off a single plug.
Commercial sets have a custome proprietary modified coax connector on each end. Spacer wires, Y’s, T’s, multiple outlet adapters, and 3 different lengths of spacer wires allow you to design a lighting plan that can light over 3000 feet of roofline, plaza, trees, etc with only one plug.

Since commercial SED light sets require a power adapter (that rectifies the incoming voltage waveform to provide reduced flicker output), they generally aren’t a good choice if you need to plug in a bunch of sets in different places since the adapters would add alot of needless expense to your materials list.

Be sure to order a couple more adapters and a few extra spacer wires when ordering your commercial lights so you don’t get caught without that one 12 foot spacer wire that you needed.

Both styles of LED Christmas lights have impact resistant injection molded LED lenses that are weather resistant – just remember you can’t remove the bulbs to customize the color and when one may eventually burn out, you’ll need to compensate for that one LED visually but doubling back during installation.

Considering the pros and cons of the two styles of LED Christmas lights only your ultimate project specifications can determine which specific style of set is right for you. So, as we get closer to the Holiday Season, grab a hot cocoa, sit down with pencil and paper and then you’ll know which choice is the right one for you.

Shellie Gardner
LED Christmas Lights

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