Aside from the Xenon strobes, all of our Christmas lights are full-wave rectified commercial-grade LED light strings. This type of light string has several advantages:

• Low Power – LED strings in general consume approximately 10% of the electricity of incandescent strings, allowing us to use more lights.
• Cool – Because of the way LED Christmas lights work, they generate almost no heat and always remain cool to the touch.
• Dimmable – Full-wave recitified strings can be dimmed, offering additional design and programming options.
• Instant On/Off – Unlike incandescents which have a slight delay when turning on and off, LED lights have no discernable delay, allowing for better note synchronization.
• Brilliance – LED bulbs are bright and have very intense colors, making for dazzling displays.
• Warranty – Because they are commercial grade, they are built much better than the strings you would find at the store. Our vendor offers a three-year limited warranty on the lights they sell.

Additionally, we (along with many other Christmas light animators) use multiple colors together to create “super strings”. Our super strings are created with equal length warm white, red, green, and blue strings that are zip-tied together. This makes for much easier light hanging but, more importantly, allows us to control each color independently. It means that, at any given time, every individual fixture on our house can be warm white, red, green, blue, or some combination of the four colors.

We also use a single channel of C-7 Xenon strobe lights on our lower roofline. We bought the Xenon strobes due their brightness and more random flashing pattern (compared to their LED counterparts). They are used in sequences to add that additional “pop” when the music climaxes, or whenever we want a more special effect.