What are the Best LED Lights for Your Christmas Tree?

The holiday season is approaching, and you know what that means—Santa’s coming to town! Well, not yet. But it is time to start planning how you’ll be decorating your home. Special focus goes toward the cornerstone of Christmas decorating—your indoor Christmas tree. Christmas trees are essential for celebrating the holidays. So bring the cheer by dressing your tree in the best LED Christmas lights.

But when it comes to decorating your tree, how do you know which way you should glow? Options for lighting up your tree abound, so understanding the different types of unique Christmas lights and the considerations in choosing them is key. Follow us as we take you through a tour of bright options of the best LED Christmas lights for your tree. After, we’ll discuss how you can find out which lights are best for you.

Types of Lights

RGB Smart Lights by Twinkly

For a dynamic set of lights that’s positively dazzling, look no further than RGB Smart Lights by Twinkly. These RGB lights are fully customizable with a wide range of colors. Twinkly presents the only solution for smart lights for your Christmas tree. Get full control these RGB light strings right on your smartphone with the Twinkly app. While you can choose specific color hues to display, you can also explore a gallery of special effects that you can program your lights to perform. Customize your holiday experience when you deck your indoor Christmas tree with RGB smart lights by Twinkly. We recommend using Twinkly Home strings since they come in various bulb counts, allowing you to get exactly the right amount of lights. But the Clusters and Dots also look spectacular on Christmas trees. When it’s time to watch a holiday classic with the family, tone down the lights by dimming them. And you can even connect to Alexa for convenient voice control. Integration of Alex and Twinkly lets you turn your LED Christmas lights on or off, dim the lights, or change the color of the lights to what you’d like to see. RGB Smart Lights by Twinkly makes new holiday traditions with beautiful displays of color changing Christmas lights. It's so much fun that both children and adults enjoy the entertainment of playing with the different effects and controls available. There's even a painting feature that lets you draw colors across the tree, with twinkling or static options.

T5 LED Lights

T5 LED lights have that familiar Christmas light shape that we all know and love. They have a familiar look and feel, perfect for a classic looking arrangement. And you know what they say—you can’t beat a classic! On the inside, however, the T5 LED lights use the best of today’s lighting technology. These lights are balanced more toward brightness and less toward saturation, setting a cheery yet smooth color tone for your room. An assortment of colors is available to choose from, including warm white, smooth red, and multi-color. A light string over 23 feet long sports the 70 bulbs per strand. Large, and we mean large, trees are supported too: Pro Christmas T5 lights can connect up to 44 sets! The inline design with a double-injected mold means they’re doubly sealed from the elements. These lights are fully-wave rectified, so the LED bulbs shine continuously without any flicker.

M5 Lights

The next lights on our tour are the M5 lights, also known as mini lights. Don’t let their size fool you, though—M5 lights are just as vibrant and smooth as Christmas lights come. Decorators enjoy these lights for their sparkling, faceted bulbs. There’s something mesmerizing about M5 lights as the faceted bulbs give off a glistening appearance, like the dancing flames of a crackling fire. Select from a range of color options with M5 lights, including amber, pink, and purple. Use the warm glow of these lights to set up a cheery traditional display, or get creative and try out the unique colors for an adventurous approach to your holiday design! Some lights also feature two different wire colors—green or white. The latter looks lovely on a pure white artificial tree.

Cluster Lights

LED Cluster lights are an interesting departure from the usual string Christmas lights if you’re looking to liven up your Christmas tree display. They also represent some of the best possibilities that LED Christmas lights have to offer. Twinkling, strobing, and flashing are all ways to describe how these lights glow. And they’re all different functions that these lights perform out of a total of 8. To keep your cluster lights from always stealing the show, set them to “steady” for a rich, consistent shine. They’re great for creating a scattered-light look with their many bulbs. Wrap them around your indoor Christmas tree to evoke images of marvelous sparkling trails, or make them a tasteful accent to your other decorations such as garlands and wreaths.

C6 Stringer Lights

Just a bit bigger than M5 lights, LED C6 lights sit nicely on indoor displays and bring appeal to all types of foliage and greenery as well. From your indoor displays to the trunks of the trees in your yard, C6 stringer lights let you enjoy the distinctive, lively shine of conicals on any display. They look great on artificial trees as well as wreaths and garlands, and are available in a variety of colors to suit the most creative applications.

Fairy Lights

If you have a table top tree, how about draping it in effervescent fairy lights? Bulbs are lined along the strings of fairy lights, giving them a look that’s simply enchanting. Ornaments made to fit your table top tree will be lit up by the illumination of fairy lights wrapped around the branches.

How to Choose Lights

Ornaments and Other Decorations

Christmas brings family together in harmony. Your Christmas tree will look its best when your decorations are in a similar harmony. But how do you get your lights, ornaments, and other decorations to fit together? Start by planning how you’d like your indoor tree to look. Do you have an eye-catching look you’d love to try? Or family heirloom ornaments that you need to put up? Prioritize the pieces that are most important to you and your family. Then, lay out all of your decorations to figure out what you’ll be including. Evaluate how elements such as color and size can be coordinated. Like the iconic image of multi-colored lights? Then choose ornaments that complement this colorful palette. Want to put up large ornaments? Then consider Christmas lights with smaller bulbs, such as cluster lights. When putting together your Christmas tree, keep in mind the balance of getting everything to work together. Don’t worry about it being perfect, either. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all.

Budget and Tree Size

Your budget and tree size will help to determine your choices on Christmas lights. Lights that work within your budget are good for your peace of mind. If you’d like to splurge on brightening your Christmas tree but the numbers still aren’t lining up, find out if and where you can make compromises (maybe not in the gift-giving department, though!). Say you’re thinking of purchasing an outdoor decoration for your yard. To afford it, you’ll have to buy cheaper lights. However, you’d really like to get higher quality lights that make your indoor Christmas tree truly shine. In this case, it might be better to opt for the higher quality lights because you’ll see them far more often than the outdoor decorations. Now, let’s talk about tree size. The height, width, and diameter of your tree make all the difference in how you decorate it. Generally, the taller the tree, the more lights. However, a slim tree won’t need as many lights as a full tree. For each foot of tree height, we recommend around 100 lights (or more). A strand can have anywhere from 50 bulbs on the reserved end of things, to 200 mini lights. Less lights help place emphasis on your ornaments, while more lights mean increased luminescence.

Tree Placement

Where you put your indoor Christmas tree is the last important consideration on our list. This is because the brightness and type of lights should vary depending on which area of your home the tree is in. You may want to dim or further control your lights when your tree is in your great/living room where you’ll entertain family or watch TV. Twinkly lights are an ideal choice thanks to quick and easy access to settings on the Twinkly app. If your tree is by a front window and visible from outside your home, lights that match your outdoor decorations will complement your overall theme.

The Best LED Lights are the Ones that Work for You

With plentiful options and considerations, we understand that decorating for the holidays isn’t always easy. And we’re here to help. Find the best LED Christmas lights for your indoor Christmas tree and other decorations all in one place at Christmas Designers. Need help designing your displays, or arranging your decorations? Send us an email and we’ll talk about planning your best looking Christmas yet!