White is a bit more Victorian/traditional, or so those sticking with white would explain.
Colored lights can be considered tacky, but this is because they gained popularity when plastic decorations ruined the Christmas landscape, along with fake trees and other abominations, such as a glowing-nosed fake reindeer who most definitely is NOT part of Santa’s sleigh team.
So…white lights are safe for McMansions and such, because they can be integrated into most decors. Colored lights can be just as classy, as long as they are not used alongside cheap plastic stand-up figures and other novelty-type decorations.
Ditto this. Anything other than white to me screams tacky and trashy. Then again I grew up in a small German village where every house was decorated solely in white lights and candles.
I picked up some white LED lights this year and they are gorgeous.
White lights aren’t ugly, but I think they’re a little boring. I love colored lights–they’re so fun and festive. It’s the darkest time of the year, I feel like we can all use a little extra sparkle.
I love multi-colored lights. My parents haven’t decorated the outside of their house in years, but darnit, it’s not Christmas lights without gigantic C9 lights along the house. Man, those things suck energy like a hoover!
It’s funny that some people think of multi-colored lights as trashy. I find white lights to be bland and nouveau-yuppie (“We got the McMansion and the 2.4 children and fancy HDTV flat panel TV and tastefully trendy bland neutral decorations inside, so we must be classy and use all white lights for Christmas”). Obviously that’s not the case for many who prefer them, but I just find them so blah.
White lights are OK, but I prefer colored ones. But then, I like plastic Santas and Rudolphs too. I’m not a huge fan of ‘tasteful’ in relationship to Christmas decorating. Christmas decorations are supposed to be kind of tacky. IMO.
I like both white and colored lights. But not mixed together.
Outside we have the old fashioned big lightbulb looking white lights all around our wrap-around porch. They remind me of a carousel. There are white mini lights on the big 5’ wreath, and white lights on the two mini trees. When the exterior of my house no longer looks like so much ass, I will decorate more.
Inside on the tree the lights must be multicolored. The ornaments are multicolored, so the lights must be also.
My MIL does an all white tree, but she has all white ornaments. It’s pretty, but it has no soul.
I like mine, too. They look so star-ry. And they don’t burn up the tree. They are programmable chaser lights, though, so that ups the fun factor for me.
I like the colored ones the best, but white isn’t awful or anything like that. I just prefer the old-timey ceramic lights that we used to decorate my house with when I was little - like the reason why I like the colored lights in the first place.
I’ve done multi-color, I’ve done white, and I’ve done one-color strands plus white. It just depends. For outside, though, it’s multi-colored all the way. I like the look of tons of white lights, but it’s just not what I grew up with, so therefore is not “Christmassy” enough for me.
The worse lights are when they switch to a different color most likely because the store was out of whatever they started with. A blank space looks better than a strip of a different color.
That sounds like the exact tree I had for about 10 years, right down to the random twinkle. It almost looked like the tree was sparkling, but wasn’t overly so, since most of the lights stayed on. I think I had over 1000 lights total. But it is only 6" high.
I didn’t put many ornaments on it, however, just candycanes, wooden beads and a few handmade things. But, I tucked about 100 red flowers all over it, so during the day it was very colorful.
I thought it looked great.
Now we have multicolored lights on our tree. Hubby thought that our son would like the colors better and switched us over to them a few years ago.
Here is a taste of my old tree. This is even after my son pulled it over on himself. So it is a little messed up. We made sure he looked at it from the playpen after that!
Our first Christmas with a baby…those tree lights were all I needed to take this photo. I had to turn off the flash. I miss my white lights.
There was a restaurant in Kingston that for years and years had the deck, walkway, and dock all done up with white lights year-round. It looked very pretty when it was reflected on the water. Recently it changed hands and the lights are no more.
Other than that, though, white lights bore me. They don’t seem Christmas-y, but kind of austere, which I’m sure is what the restaurant was aiming for. I much prefer strings of a solid color or multi-color when it comes to holiday decorating.
Oh, and thinking again, I really was only posting about outdoor lights, where I like multicolored or a specific non-white design scheme. Indoors and on the tree? Sure, all white is fine. Still a titch dull, but you can fancy it up with the bright colorful ornaments or flowers.
It’s seeing an entire outside of just white lights with nothing to balance it out with cheery color… it seems so dreary.
Edited to add: I did like one mostly-white tree growing up: my grandma’s. She had an artificial huge tree with the flocking that looks like snow (but it was done well). There would be all white lights, silver and gold garland and all ornaments were white, silver, and gold (with occasional hints of other colors). That was pretty nice.
I like multi-colored lights that twinkle and lots of animated deer, sheep, santas, etc. and super bright dancing lights to music and thousands of things beeping and bouncing and shining and moving all over the lawn.
Oh, and big blow up stuff, and big stars on the roof.
