One thing you might not think about is the increased amount of energy you use at Christmas. All the decorations, cooking, hosting guests, and charging up your new gadgets, will leave a spike on your electricity consumption. One thing that runs for hours on end is your Christmas lights, but how much power do they consume?
Below we will discuss and test Christmas light wattage, explain how to work it out for yourself, and calculate the total electricity required.
How Many Watts are Christmas Lights?
The average set of Christmas lights uses between 5 and 15 watts.
The exact number depends on the size and model of your Christmas lights. For example, a small set of LED string lights draw 5W or less while larger LED bulbs rise to 10W or more.
The good news is that most Xmas lighting use LED bulbs so the wattage is always very low. In general terms, you need to take into account the size of each individual bulb and the number of bulbs in the set. It might change a little depending on the light setting you are using too.
How to Find Out Your Christmas Lights Wattage
There’s 3 ways you can work out the wattage of Christmas lights.
- Check Product Specification
The quickest way is to look at the Christmas lights’ specifications. The watts (W) is usually written on a sticker on the base of the adaptor. If not, you can check the user manual or the manufacturer’s website for technical details.
- Use a Wattmeter
A wattmeter is brilliant for getting a live wattage reading and tracking total energy usage of any appliance. You can plug it into your Christmas lights to get instant information.
I used one to test my Christmas lights which gave a live reading of 6.8W.
- Wattage Formula or Calculator
If you know the amperage and voltage of your Christmas lights you can use this to find the maximum watt rating. Simply use the formula Amps x Volts = Watts. Or you can head over to the ‘Watt Calculator’ to work this out.
Christmas Light Wattage Examples
Let’s take a look at specific examples of how many watts Christmas lights draw. Below is a collection of modern Christmas lights with their listed power ratings.
| Christmas Lights Model | Power Rating (Watts) |
| Blooma Barnaby LED Outdoor String lights | 3.6 |
| Inlight Parasol Warm white LED Outdoor String lights | 4.32 |
| Festilight 80 LED String Light | 12 |
| Wepikk Christmas Lights | 4 |
| SITANES Curtain String Lights | 4 |
| Ollny Christmas Lights Outdoor String Lights | 6 |
As you can see, the power ratings vary between different Christmas lights. So you should take the time to check your own appliance.
How Much Electricity Do Christmas Lights Use?
You can use Christmas light’s wattage to work out how much electricity they use. Plus this can be useful in understanding how much it costs to run your Christmas lights.
A watt (W) is a measurement of power at a single point in time. A watt-hour (Wh) is the total amount of electricity used in an hour. For example, Christmas lights drawing 10W would use 10Wh when running for an hour.
Happily, electricity bills are recorded in kilowatt-hours (kWh). A kilowatt is simply 1000 watts. So a 10W Christmas light set running for 1 hour uses 0.01kWh.
In reality, you use Christmas lights for 8 hours a day, for 1 month of the year. That’s 240 hours runtime.
This means a set of lights use about 2400Wh or 2.4kWh electricity each Christmas.
That’s a rough electricity cost of $0.36 to run your Christmas lighting for 8 hours a day through December.
Using Christmas Lights Off-Grid
If you’re planning to use your Christmas lights in an off-grid situation like a power RV, boat, semi-truck, or similar, the information above is useful. You can select the correct electrical equipment and work out the run time.
You can either use a power inverter, portable power station, or generator to generate AC electricity.
To make sure everything runs smoothly you should check two things on this equipment – wattage capacity and total energy capacity.
Your power source, like an inverter, should have a wattage capacity of at least 20% more than your Christmas lights. This ensures it will be able to deliver enough power as they are never 100% efficient.
Secondly, you need to ensure your energy source, like a battery, has enough energy to run the Christmas lights for the required amount of time. As we already know, they use up to 10Wh of electricity for each usage. This is the equivalent to 0.83Ah on a 12V battery.
How Many Watts Does Christmas Lights Use Summary
I hope you now have a clear understanding of how many watts Christmas lights use.
Thanks to the fact that these are low powered LED lights, many people use them all year round. We have a set of warm string lights through our bedroom for low level ambience. In addition, the minute power consumption makes them perfect to use in RVs and campervans where electricity is limited. Finally, when it comes to overall energy usage through the holidays these lights should not worry you.
