Christmas Light Colours in the UK

WTF is with the British and their choice of Christmas light colours?

I need to know, because I am one now (British, that is), and I have to get my head around the drear that passes itself of as ‘light in the midst of darkness’.

I mean, even if you don’t like Christmas, the least you could acknowledge is that it is meant to brighten up the winter for a few weeks, yet here in my adopted home of Cardiff (and many other places across the UK) the choice of light colour is something I can only describe as ‘fog’ and ’emergency services blue’. Lovely.

These colours, for example, speak of warmth and coziness on a dark winter’s night:

Whereas this excuse for lighting looks like someone couldn’t be arsed to arrange the tree nicely, while reminding people – with the ambulance-coloured formations on the castle wall – not to drink-drive:

When they can be seen against the same-coloured sky, that is…

You’re full of the joys of Christmas.

Buy some multi-coloured lights from the DIY shed. Job done.

If you don’t like our choice of christmas lights (lol) then you know what to do. …..

Coloured lights look cheap and nasty, white and blue lights are more pleasant they also are more winter like.

I have observed that you find more blue LED displays (see fig 1.) the closer you get to a pub with a flat roof (see fig 2.) that has a guard dog on the terrace of the flat above (see fig 3.).

fig 1.

fig 2.

fig 3.

It’s still November so they cannot be Christmas lights. They must be there for some other reason / celebration. Therefore your point is invalid.

Harry the Spider has it.

Op, I think you should enter such an aforementioned flat-roofed establishment & announce your displeasure at the quality of lighting displays in the locale.

Where is that pub? It looks very good; they offer great ales and spirits.

Drac – Moderator
Coloured lights look cheap and nasty, white and blue lights are more pleasant they also are more winter like.

Oh, I agree that white and blue are winter-like alright. But I am not sure that the lights tradition is more about blending in with the winter so much as it is about contrasting with the winter.

And that’s ignoring our subjective differences on whether or not coloured lights look cheap and nasty. 😉

Cheap and nasty is such an ugly phrase.

Blue Christmas lights are bloody awful

In devices blue LEDs are fine

My brother does light and sound work, sometimes he does christmas trees/lights in normal trees for councils and companies and the like. It’s far faster to go up and down the tree like a psychopath would, rather than round the tree like a normal human being, which is why most civic trees look so weird and ugly. Once the tree hits a certain size you put up the tower/hiab/cherrypicker/whatever then work up and down on that path rather than move round it.

And nobody ever does that thing where you turn the lights on and stand with your eyes almost shut so you can see the patterns.

I like white tree lights- dark colours, russet and greens and the like, and millions of not very bright white lights. But christmas is tacky and tasteless so I can see why flashing bright colours and silver trees and that get so much mileage.

Completely with you on this- blue lights are dreary and chilly feeling, colourful lights are cheery and festive and brighten up the winter.

My other gripe is LED bulbs- they’re just too small and not much fun. Big bulbs were way more fun, both for trees in your house and street Christmas lights. Christmas is not about saving money.

Good:

Rubbish:

Fairly good-

Rubbish. I get cross every time I see this- there used to be a santa with moving reindeer. Now it’s just a cargo net of lights. How jolly….

Back when we used to actually have winter, coloured lights would provide a nice contrast to the snow and ice.

Now climate change has ***** everything we need to pretend we still have proper winter by using chilly white and blue lights.

I’m all for the coloured lights ….. Like we had when I was a kid in the 70,s. These days it’s all so bloody contrived with white lights and colour co-ordinated decs. The wife insists on matching stuff for the tree , all white and red or another theme of colours…. I hate our tree.
It should be just a jumble of multi coloured lights and whatever unbroken tree decorations you have in the box. …. Oh and tree chocolates of course.

@munrobiker: That last picture nails it!

Basically a sterile blanket of frosty white LEDs. Nice.

Incidentally, I have no problem with lights not being coloured per se; it’s the coldness of the white LEDs that really gets on my wick.

So, for example, this:

as opposed to these hideous things:

Warm yellow – good.

I too dislike matching trees. We have two trees- one I decorate which is all glass animals and Father Christmases and Baby Jesuses and one my wife decorates which is all red and silver.

munrobiker – Member

I get cross every time I see this- there used to be a santa with moving reindeer. Now it’s just a cargo net of lights. How jolly….

Those can be quite nice, they used to (maybe still do?) it that way around the tron in Glasgow and it works well with those buildings. Horrendous in that pic, though. It’s like someone’s said “It’ll remind people of the night’s sky” and someone else said “What’s the point of that? Let’s make it remind everyone of rush hour on the M6”

They all used to be multi coloured, until white came to be seen as classy about ten years ago. It was a very definite thing, started suddenly.

Where I grew up in St Helens the lights in the town square seemed to have fallen off the back of a truck on its way to Blackpool.

In the place of anything festive in form or character we had multicoloured candy flavoured pulsating concentric targets. It was like being trapped inside a pinball machine

Since then anything seems festive by comparison

Munrobiker, your second photo, the ‘rubbish’, isn’t of LED’s, it’s the classic filament ‘fairy’ lights.
Which I will concede are rubbish, because of the hours wasted trying to find the one duff bulb that’s stopping the other hundred or so from working…
I tend to prefer pure white LED’s on trees, rather than yellow ones like anemic glow worms; about seven or eight years ago I bought some strings of White LED’s from Wilco and fixed them round the windows with bits of Velcro, the kitchen ones have been in use every day since, they give enough light at night to allow movement around the kitchen without any other lights, which is handy late at night. Can’t be arsed with a tree though, it’s only me and my elderly dad, and we’re neither much given to gaudy Christmas decorations; well, any, TBH.

I’m with the OP here, multicoloured all the way. Xmas isn’t a time to be ‘tasteful’ and blue just looks cold.

Tree deccys also, we have tree decorations from our first xmas together and they are part of our tradition. The girls at work all buy new ones most years to fit with this years theme.

I’m with the OP too, and I think finbar has a point. However, it doesn’t always have to be multi-coloured: When we lived in America, our estate had a tradition where every household put candles in sand-weighted bags along the margins of their drive and a apportioned part of the road, resulting in a spectacular scene. This type of thing….

The Christmas lights in my home town used to be great. Lots and lots of coloured proper bulbs, huge think tinsel and lots and lots of them.

Now we have this

…which is pretty much a well, where the ++++ are the lights then?

Obviously, the availability of old skool bulbs, budget cuts and not wanting to burn the souls of a billion baby seals to generate the electricity to power them all has an effect, but it really has ended up being a truly pathetic display now.

Mr Grumpy, Essex

EDIT:
The local Facebook reposter (the local newspaper) would have you believe that was the crowd to see the ‘light’ being switched on, but I think it may just have been a 2 for 1 offer at Greggs in reality

mikey74 – Member

I’m with the OP too, and I think finbar has a point. However, it doesn’t always have to be multi-coloured: When we lived in America, our estate had a tradition where every household put candles in sand-weighted bags along the margins of their drive and a apportioned part of the road, resulting in a spectacular scene. This type of thing..

OK it is pretty but it also looks more like you’re commemorating a school shooting.

Last years Brighton ones were quite good:

Coloured Christmas lights are for people who hang their toilet roll with the drop against the wall.

My 2 penneth, Christmas lights should either be white (not LED white) or multi-coloured as the original post, everything else is, well, just shite 😀

Slightly dead thread, but: