How much it costs to run Christmas lights and hack to cut down on electricity bills

dailyrecord.co.uk:

The festive season is upon us, meaning many people will be choosing to decorate their homes with Christmas trees adorned in sparkling lights.But due to the ongoing cost of living crisis, some may be concerned about how the festive decorations may be adding to energy bills - which are already high for a lot of households.Some kinds of lights are more energy-efficient than others, but some - such as rope-style lights in the shape of Christmas characters - could be piling on as much as £510 to your energy bill if put up on December 1 and taken down on December 31.To help households identify how much they can expect to pay for their lights during the festive season, experts at CreditFix have created a handy tool that helps you work out the cost of each piece of decor.Wales Online reports that you can budget your entire festive setup, with options to choose from such as fairy lights, LED motifs and inflatables.An average set of indoor mains-powered fairy lights would cost just 12p to run for six hours a day, from December 1 until January 5.

And a LED inflatable, such as an inflatable Santa, would cost £3.67 to run for the same period.The tool also lets you enter a start and end date that you intend to have the decorations up for, which aims to give you a more accurate figure.By doing this you can see how much you'll save by holding off for a couple of days or even a week.

And according to the pros, you can slash your bills in half simply by waiting a little closer to Christmas to get decorating.Layla Johnson, regional manager at Creditfix said: "We all know this Christmas will be more difficult this year.