Green or white lights for exterior window wreaths

4 years ago

As a slight interruption to your usual curb appeal questions, I'm looking for advice on a less permanent, seasonal issue:

To help lighten up the dark mass of our house this year we are adding lit wreaths to eight of our front windows. I'm going back and forth on whether these wreaths should have warm white or green lights. I've ordered the wreaths unlit so I would have flexibility to light and decorate them as we see fit. Right now we plan to leave them simple with a large red bow on each.

The rest of our lights are currently white with multicolor lights mixed in with the white lights in certain areas for accent. We may someday replace the multicolor lights with red C9 strings once the old lights wear out. I did a quick Photoshop having tested one wreath below:

With warm white lights on wreaths:

With green lights on wreaths

Since it is subtle in the photos, the ornamental arborvitae on left, tall trees on the right and two arborvitae flanking the door have multicolor lights mixed in with white.

I also though about red but didn't like how that looked. Multi-color might have been another option, but since the yard mostly uses incandescent lights and the battery powered wreath lights would need to be LED, the multicolor lights would look very different.

What does everyone here think?

Warm White Lights

Green Lights

Featured Answer

A Fox
Original Author

4 years ago

Incandescent since we own so many strings of them already. It's a matter of balancing an extra $40 in electric charges combined for December and January versus $400 to replace all of the lights at once. Then getting one's that have the right white color and minimize flicker can also be challenging. This year we got our first LED tree. It looks fantastic. The LED indoor stair garland and the lights around our front door on the other hand are disconcerting if you spend too much time looking at them.

We tend to be warm white people in a old-fashioned traditional way, in the same way that the house is an old-fashioned traditional house filled wallpaper, off-white whites, and a fair amount of antique and traditional furniture. Bright white lights feel like they would be an affront to all of that, as well as all of our elderly neighbors who don't decorate their house exteriors (or at all).

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Comments (10)

PRO
Patricia Colwell Consulting
4 years ago
I have no idea why you would use incandecsent lighting for outdoors and I like white lights not warm in Leds
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jck910
4 years ago
white and I think you need wreaths on the windows over the door also
beckysharp Reinstate SW Unconditionally
4 years ago
Warm white. Always : ) .
Holly Stockley
4 years ago
What Becky said.
ratherbesewing
4 years ago
White lights only for me. IMHO, some of those LEDs appear blue to me.
arcy_gw
4 years ago
As I often do I would pick C. White lights on the foliage looks like a city scape--commercial, but when you are lighting things with no leaves it does make the most sense. Evergreens I would go mulit colored. The green on the wreaths is a good change but again I would do with multi color, personally, I think I see red on the trees on the right and that looks best!! Back in the day I had the incandescent lights on our driveway fence. DH always said it looked like a runway!!! Now we have soft LEDs and it's a much quieter look.
PRO
Patricia Colwell Consulting
4 years ago
last modified: 4 years ago
Have you looked at the laser lights for the big tree We have huge trees in our yard and too big to actually puts lights on so we use laser lights for all of them .Very affordable too
Oakley
4 years ago
GREEN! And here's why. Everybody does white. It's old. Even I did it for years until I changed to a solid color, which wasn't green. lol

Where I live not many homes have green, but a friend of mine does green lights and green trees every Christmas and let me tell you, it stands out more than all the white and colored lights combined. They stand out in a beautiful and quiet way, not in your face way. Understated but it steals the show.

Last night we drove around looking at lights and it got to the point when I saw the hundreth house with with white lights, I started yawning.

Green is an "ooh and ahhh" color. :)
PRO
Flo Mangan
4 years ago
Do solar flood lights for illuminating wreaths. Then do this from big tree branches in warm white lights. Flood lights on front door with large topiaries each side of porch. Single candlesticks in each window. That’s all.