!#5: Commercial Christmas Get It Now!: 2011

!±8± Christmas Lights Design - Adding Twinkle

Have you grown tired of your steady-on Christmas lights?

Perhaps it's time to add a little twinkle!

When designing your Christmas light display, there are several aspects of design to keep in mind as you make your lighting plans. Early in the process you'll choose the style of lights you want to use based what you like - from traditional C7 and C9 Christmas light sets, to mini lights to the latest in LED lighting. Christmas light lovers have never had so many choices. Next you need to consider a color scheme.

The most popular color is transparent with multi, red, blue and and green not too far behind. New upward trends in purple, pink, and teal are making the lighting future very exciting.

So, you've selected the types of lighting you want to use, you've decided on color and now you wonder, "what about twinkling and movement in my lighting display?" or perhaps you are thinking,"how do I drive my neighbors crazy with twinkle lights".

There are a wide variety of ways to add movement to your Holiday lighting. Let's take a quick look at a few of them.

1. Turn your steady mini lights into twinkling lights. That little extra bulb with a red tip is a flasher bulb. It causes all the lights on the string to turn on and off simultaneously.

You don't need more than one flasher per line but if you have a longer mini light set that is wired in sections, you can put a flasher in each section of bulbs.

2. Mini lights also come with built in controllers. These sets commonly have 140 lights and have multiple functions like chase, fade, slow fade, steady on and more. These light sets are like cayenne pepper and unless you are using them on your Christmas tree - that's classic - you should be cautious not to overuse these spicy lights.

Unless, of course, you like a carnival atmosphere in your lawn. In which case, go for it. Remember, those neighbors?

3. C7 and C9 Christmas light sets can be set up with 2-3 lines offset by 50% or 30% of the spacing between the individual bulbs and connected to a multi channel controller that will cycle throught the 3 channels. This will give your lights a marquee effect. (This is also a good approach for outlining signs.)

4. Lastly, one of the nicest and most elegant ways to add twinkle to your lighting is to sprinkle in a few C7 or c9 twinkle lights into your transparent bulb display. Imagine a wonderful tree, full of clear C7 lights - and every so often, randomly placed through the tree, a very few twinkling lights.

Twinkle light bulbs start to flash as they heat up - with about a one second on and a one second off rhythm. If you use just the right amount of twinkle lights, viewers won't necessarily see the twinkling action right away - they'll just see that you have a magical tree or two in your yard.

Steady on, twinkling, flashing. There are different ways to personalize your Christmas light display with light movement. Just consider it another part of your total design.