Christmas

Types Of Christmas Lights

How to Choose the Best Outdoor Christmas Lights

Investing in the best type of Christmas lights is one of the simplest and most satisfying ways to give your home a festive makeover. From string lights for the Christmas tree in your living room to silhouette lights for your garden, there’s a huge selection of styles and designs to explore. We’ve put together a handy guide to help you find the perfect way to illuminate your home this Christmas.

Christmas lights and safety

We recommend keeping pets and small children well away from Christmas lights as plugs, cables and electricity can be dangerous. For their safety, it’s a good idea to hang lights out of arm’s reach and conceal cables or sockets. 

Top tip: Before buying any outdoor Christmas lights, it’s best to check carefully whether they’re designed for indoor or outdoor use. Plenty of lights are suitable for outdoors but using indoor lights outside can cause damage like blowing a fuse. 

What are the different types of Christmas lights?

Where you’re planning on putting your lights can help you decide what type you should get. There are a few types of Christmas lights to consider, and each is best suited to a different area of the home. 

It’s also important to think about your preferred colour scheme. Our LED Christmas lights are available in a variety of eye-catching colours, whether you prefer a wintry look with bright white Christmas tree lights or a festive multicolour stake light, you’ll find them online and in-store. 

Top tip: Looking for inspiration? Check out our outdoor Christmas light ideas. 

1. Christmas string and cluster lights

Best suited for lighting up your Christmas tree, or running along your fence for a magical glow, Christmas string lights are quick and easy to put up – since they’re usually all strung together in one long line. This year we have a selection of string lights in festive shapes, like icicles and stars, so you can recreate a frosty scene at home. 

2. Christmas projector lights

Christmas projector lights are often overlooked when thinking of outdoor Christmas decoration ideas. They are a perfect choice for decorating the outside of your house without having to deal with ladders or hooks that are often required to hang outdoor Christmas lights. With the latest lighting and motion technology doing all the hard work for you, simply plug in, aim and enjoy. 

3. Curtain & pin wire lights 

Curtain and pin wire lights are fantastic types of Christmas lights that can be draped over or shaped to surfaces. Whether you want to decorate your windows this Christmas with a net made from LEDs or subtly frame ornaments with pin wire lights, these lights are both classy and convenient.

4. Christmas silhouette lights & inflatables 

For classic outdoor Christmas lights, look no further than Christmas silhouettes and inflatables. Christmas silhouettes use LED lights placed on a frame to create Christmas shapes, including snowflakes and reindeer, that make a statement in your garden. If you’re looking for something with more flare 6ft inflatables can also be used to build festive scenes and spark Christmas joy.

5. Stake lights

You can use stake lights to frame pathways and other garden features. Our Christmas-themed stake lights are LED powered and come in a range of festive options like snowflakes and candy canes. Push stake lights into the ground and watch your garden come to life this winter. 

Top tip: Once you’ve chosen the perfect type of Christmas lights, read ourguide to hanging Christmas lights outside.

Christmas lights and types of power

To make sure you can experience your outdoor Christmas lights in all their festive glory, they need a power source. When you’re looking at Homebase Christmas lights, you can choose between mains-powered lights that need to be plugged into a socket or battery powered lights. When working out which power supply you need there are a few considerations: 

1. Power sockets 

If you’re looking at types of outdoor Christmas lights and have an easy-to-access outdoor plug socket, choosing mains-powered lights is a great option. If you don’t have an accessible external socket, you may need to do some extra planning and consider extension leads or battery-powered lights instead. 

Top tip: We recommend adding a Residual Current Device (RCD) adaptor to your outdoor sockets too. If you get a power surge, it will cut off your electricity supply to avoid any accidents. You should also think about a weatherproof cover to protect sockets and cables from damp or moisture.

2. Battery power

For indoor Christmas lights battery-powered or mains-powered options are great choices. From putting lights on a Christmas tree to completing Christmas table centrepieces, battery-powered lights can be put almost anywhere inside. However, you should think about how long you want your Christmas lights to be on as mains-powered lights mean that you don’t need to think about battery life. 

Top tip: Rechargeable batteries and rechargeable Christmas lights are a great way to reduce costs and waste. 

3. Timer switches

Timer switches can be used for indoor and outdoor Christmas decorations and are a simple way to control your lights without needing to worry about fiddly switches or dealing with winter temperatures. Most of our types of Christmas lights come with them already but, if not, adding one can be a good way to save time, energy and money. 

Types of Christmas light bulbs and sizes 

Although you can still find Christmas lights using incandescent bulbs, all our lights use LEDs. Brighter and costing less than 1p per hour to run, our LEDs don’t heat up, they are safer and last up to 50,000 hours. 

There are different types of LED bulbs that you can find in our Christmas lights: 

  1. Compact LEDs: Bringing hundreds of lights together, compact LEDs are perfect for creating a shimmering sense of Christmas style inside and out. 
  2. Multifunction LEDs: Ideal for trying out a different look every day of Christmas, multifunction LEDs have a variety of settings that you can choose between like twinkle, flashing and static. 
  3. Cluster LEDs: Also available in garlands and strings, these luxurious lights help you accentuate your home’s Christmassy feel. Choose from streamlined regular size bulbs or large bulbs for a real statement piece. 
  4. Line LEDs: A traditional shape of Christmas lights, you can string them through your trees or wrap them around bannisters. You can control when they light up with their timer feature too. 

And there we have it, our guide to the different types of  Christmas lights. From Christmas projector lights to a dainty garland, there’s a festive solution for every size and style of home. If you need more inspiration – check out our dedicated  Christmas Ideas & Advice hub.



Homebase

Homebase

Writer and expert