We keep our Christmas lights up all year

Thom Dunn

When it comes to standard Christmas lights, we’re always looking for the same basic criteria. You want accurate colors that are bright but not glaring. You also want lights that are weather-resistant and don’t get too tangled. We measure the brightness output of every strand we test. And to help us assess the temperature and quality of the colors, we consult with lighting professionals—most recently Ari Herzig, the lighting supervisor for Emerson College’s Office of the Arts.

We test all Christmas lights by hanging them on railings and trees, and then we unwrap them again to see how much easier they are to handle and whether they knot or jumble. We also expose them to the elements, tossing the strands into a running shower and leaving them out in a bucket in the rain and snow to see how they hold up.

We kept the Twinkly Generation II Smart RGB-W LED String Lights hanging on our Boston patio all year, frequently changing the colors to fit with different moods and holidays. These Wi-Fi–connected smart string lights were a new upgrade pick last year, but we wanted to be absolutely certain they were worth the investment.

There’s an obvious appeal to having one set of lights that can display more than 16 million colors in a variety of customizable patterns, all of which you can program via an app. But the appeal fades a bit if the lights fail during inclement weather. Boston dealt with record-breaking rain, heat, and cold this year, so we were pleasantly surprised that the Twinklys never failed on us.

We even tested one strand of the now-discontinued Gen I Twinklys, which aren’t even rated for outdoor use, and they survived too—at least until we tried to rearrange the lights and moved the power pack in just the right way to short-circuit it. Oops. (Luckily, you can’t buy these ones anymore.)

Even with the extreme weather, throughout the year we had numerous neighbors stop us outside to tell us how much they enjoyed our ever-changing light display and how it brought so much brightness into their lives, despite the pandemic solitude. This happened one day when the Twinkly app was being particularly glitchy and frustrating (as it unfortunately tends to be). An elderly man told us that he walked by with his dog every day, and he actually thanked us for giving him something to look forward to. This was a nice reminder that sometimes it’s worth enduring a little buggy software.

Our previous color-changing pick, the GE Color Choice Multi or Warm White Multi Function LEDs, didn’t spark nearly as much joy. And they couldn’t even survive being dropped in a bucket of water for a minute.

Thom Dunn

When it comes to the simpler (non-smart) string lights, year after year our testing has shown us that the companies with the most pedigree tend to have the best products, as well. That’s why this year we’re also taking a closer look at the GE StayBright Wide Angle Warm White LED String Lights, to compare them against the 5-mm wide-angle “fairy lights” we’ve been recommending from Christmas Designers.

GE and Christmas Designers have both been in the string-lights game for more than four decades, and there’s an attention to detail in their products that you just don’t find with other brands or manufacturers (especially ones that make cheap LEDs, which tend to flicker and buzz). You can tell these lights are well made, all the way down to the wiring—which makes them easier to handle when you’re wrapping them around the tree or folding them up for storage.

For similar reasons, we’ll also be checking out the Target-exclusive Wondershop Warm White and Multicolor LED lights. Although we’re typically skeptical of those smaller in-house brands, the Wondershop lights are made by Philips, a company that’s earned its reputation. By comparison, every light set we’ve tried from Home Depot’s Home Accent Holiday feels like a frayed rope right out of the box. In our experience, that tangled Gordian knot turns out to be an omen of a shoddy product in every other way, too.

Thom Dunn

After living with the Twinklys for a full year, we plan to continue recommending them as an upgrade pick. For the mileage you get from these lights, they’re absolutely worth the higher cost. We’ve used them to do a New Year’s Eve countdown with fireworks on an outside wall, alternated between several pulsating hearts for Valentine’s Day, and set a simple moving tricolor flag to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. And, perhaps most importantly, we enjoyed a roving Bat signal on Batman Day. We endured a lot of extreme weather this year, but the Twinklys were a constant beacon that survived through it all.

There’s a good chance that we’ll also end up recommending the GE StayBright Wide Angle Warm White LED String Lights as an alternative to our current 5-mm fairy-light picks from Christmas Designers and Christmas Lights Etc. That will depend in part on availability because the Christmas industry has been suffering from similar supply-chain problems as everything else lately.

“It’s been a very challenging year on the sourcing side,” said Jason Woodward from Christmas Designers. “Lots of shipping delays and expected shortages for this holiday season.” We heard similar things from our contacts at GE as well. So if you want your string lights in time for the winter solstice holidays, consider this your warning to order them sooner rather than later.

Thom Dunn