To want Christmas lights without red

[ChristmasAgainWTAF]

Hi, first world problems I know. We decorated the tree with what I thought were traditional lights and put all of the baubles & ornaments on. It is bugging me having red, dark blue, green & yellow lights. I just went with it as I liked the shapes but now I'm finding them ugly.

I have found some great traditional lights online with orange instead of yellow, pink instead of red, no turquoise blue, but offerings are limited. I hate LED. The thing is I really don't want to redo the whole tree, it's 7 foot. I will get them for next year.

Does anybody know if I can do anything to make the red lights look pink, yellow ones orange? The bulb covers screw off but I wouldn't want to risk overheating. Does anybody know if there's anything I can do, a film or something to put inside round the lights?

Search Amazon for Noma Canterbury bells or Pickwick shades and they have both types of the traditional lamps

@MissCherryCakeyBun thank you, they're great. I just wish I could get some without the electric blue.

Judgy!

Yes directly on the bulb, the ones I have don’t have any extra covers. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be safe, they don’t get very hot and there is a layer of plastic between the electric parts and the pen/paint. I wouldn’t go actually dipping them in paint, although if they’re made for outdoors that would probably be fine too

@NashvilleQueen · Yesterday 22:06

'I would like multi coloured pastel lights. The most delicate of pink, blue, yellow and green. I don't know why no one has designed any yet. They're always far too garish.NashvilleQueen · Yesterday 22:06'

Would these sort of pastel lights be maybe what you're looking for?

https://www.whitestores.co.uk/800-led-christmas-lights-40m-lit-length.html?product=W22025&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAjrarBhAWEiwA2qWdCD5s-hDRB0BwZ1Hi0rFmazFJ1iHt9GRDK1WFnV4KJPRYlfUmdE31yBoCRvEQAvD_BwE#fo_c=575&fo_k=ca634541c85fd44f90840361f168a330&fo_s=gplauk

@JellyIegs sorry I somehow skipped your message. They look amazing thank you! They really remind me of the lights from my childhood.

As an adult I have always wanted tree lights like the ones on the classic cartoon film 'The Snowman!!'

Coloured lights look so tacky.

@SawX what lights do you have? I'm keen to see a picture for inspiration! Do you have young dcs? I would have been underwhelmed seeing boring white every year as a child!

It’s just lights not a mooning Santa on the front lawn.

light colour is purely down to personal taste and zero to do with classiness.

I’m really classy but a mooning Santa (Father Christmas, surely!) on the lawn sounds fun!

Well if it’s a Father Christmas not a Santa that might raise it’s status from tacky I suppose

Christmas should be tacky. Tasteful Christmas decorations have no soul.

@DappledThings totally agree with your comments

I LOVE COLOUR!! And I'm quite old.

Twinkly LED smart lights are the best way to get exactly the colours that you want. They are expensive but you can set precise RGB shades and the brightness in the app. We have a soft pastel rainbow on our tree right now.

You can still buy white incandescent lights but I don’t think you can get multicoloured. You could set an eBay alert to buy second hand but I would get them PAT tested and be very vigilant about proximity to curtains, keeping the tree very well-watered etc as they are a fire hazard.

Colourful Christmas is very fashionable this year. Social media is full of trendy young things rebelling against their parents’ tasteful decorations (‘sad beige Christmas’ as I have seen it described) and going for a retro 90s Christmas with a riot of maximalism and colour. It’s brilliant. Just what the baby Jesus would want us to do

⬆️ this is what you need OP. Twinkly digital, completely programmable. Any shade (s) or brightness you want.

They have! I think they are paper this year. They are definitely recyclable.

This. I had warm white lights on my tree when I had my first home in 1993 as it was the new trend at the time and felt grown up. Kept it that way for 20+ years. Embraced rainbow colours a few years back and love it, as does DD. I find it really weird that some folk hang on to the 'white lights only' being classy and anything else is a monstrosity. It's personal taste, but also fashions change, and surely people wear actual colours and have colour in their homes and gardens.

We hsve coloured lights and always have on our main lounge tree, we do have white lights on other trees which are nice but our main tree is so colourful we love it. We have a couple of very old bulb lights not led on them and thar helps. They are not as bright. I generally just have them on static as I gree the flashing can be too intense. If i put them twinkling ill just do one set not all of them.

You probably wouldn't have to take the lights off. LEDs are very unobtrusive when they're turned off. If you find some you like, you could put them on and just have that set switched on though it might be difficult to get them onto the tree at all if it's very heavily decorated. I see LEDs as a wonder of modern life. I was born in 1956 and decorating the tree became a very tense day filled with my Dad muttering under his breath as he searched the whole string of lights for the one bulb that was not working. In those days it was a case of one out, all out!

I remember the days of One out, all out @Floatlikeafeather2 it would take all day on a Saturday to decorate the tree. One year, the lights wouldn't work as usual. Dad sent us to the Newsagent 2 miles away for replacement bulbs. We came back with the wrong ones. Went for a 2nd trip and came back with the right bulb pack, but no starter bulb, and of course it was the starter bulb that was faulty. Cue third time trudging to the shops.

And God help you if you stepped on one of the bulbs and broke it!

They are a terrible fire risk too, especially on a dry tree.

Totally, it's in the name!

@Floatlikeafeather2 · Today 08:45

"You probably wouldn't have to take the lights off. LEDs are very unobtrusive when they're turned off. If you find some you like, you could put them on and just have that set switched on though it might be difficult to get them onto the tree at all if it's very heavily decorated. I see LEDs as a wonder of modern life. I was born in 1956 and decorating the tree became a very tense day filled with my Dad muttering under his breath as he searched the whole string of lights for the one bulb that was not working. In those days it was a case of one out, all out!'

Haha I grew up in the late 80s & 90s. I now know why my dm would decorate the tree when we were at school! Often she would have it all sorted and then they would go, and my parents would be rummaging around in the branches looking for the culprit.

I have bought a small set of traditional shaped retro style lights, they have in rarely found 5 colours of pink, orange, red, green & blue. They are the best ones I've seen. I'm going to try putting them over the tree lightly, with it only being a smaller set hopefully, they'll fit okay with the others. I have bought a dimmer switch for the set on there too. Maybe it will all balance out and won't end up looking like something from The Grinch 😂

@RainbowZebraWarrior I bet that was the reason people's decorations weren't up until mid December back then! They were organising and sourcing their bulbs, and with no Internet to turn to either.