pre-Lit vs not not-prelit Christmas tree

[Janeway]

I heard some people last year say they regret going unlit on the trees as the lighting was never as good or was so much more work. I am hoping to hear from BTDT people on what they think. Thanks!

edited to add: I am referring to pre-lit trees with the lights on them already as opposed to an unlit tree where we add our own lights.

Edited July 23 by Janeway

[busymama7]

Lit are wonderful until they aren't.  

[busymama7]

I light 2 large ones each year and have a good system for making them look really good with lights even and such. 

[Beth S]

To clarify, I think you're wanting to compare the Christmas Trees that are sold "pre-lit" with the lights integrated on the branches . . . vs. conventional unlit Trees.

 

[Katy]

I said I would never do it again after a ridiculously expensive tree stopped working the next year. But then last year Walmart had a gorgeous tree that was clearly a dupe of a high end tree with 1200 warm white lights for under $200. I couldn’t resist. The tree is gorgeous and if it stops working after a year or two I might buy another next year. 

[mmasc]

40 minutes ago, Katy said:

I said I would never do it again after a ridiculously expensive tree stopped working the next year. But then last year Walmart had a gorgeous tree that was clearly a dupe of a high end tree with 1200 warm white lights for under $200. I couldn’t resist. The tree is gorgeous and if it stops working after a year or two I might buy another next year. 

Link??

[mmasc]

I have my first-ever artificial tree (3 christmases so far) and love that it has the lights on it already. It was about $250, so not cheap but definitely not high-end. It is from Lowe’s. I wouldn’t want an artificial tree without lights bc imho, that was part of the appeal!

[Carol in Cal.]

1 hour ago, busymama7 said:

Lit are wonderful until they aren't.  

See, exactly.  Think about how fast a string of lights stops working, and then imagine having to throw away your entire tree when it does.

[busymama7]

12 minutes ago, Carol in Cal. said:

See, exactly.  Think about how fast a string of lights stops working, and then imagine having to throw away your entire tree when it does.

We didn't throw our tree out but we did spend hours taking the light strands off of it. 🤦‍♀️. We liked the tree and it fit in the spot well so it was worth it.  I don't find stringing the lights on the trees to be all that time consuming and I appreciate being able to use only strands that work.  

[Katy]

42 minutes ago, mmasc said:

Link??

Until the trees are fully stocked in stores again, there is no link. I found it last year because an influencer mentioned it in October. It was sold out in two weeks. 

[marbel]

I've had both, and prefer to string my own lights after my experience with pre-lit. After half the lights died, we strung our own for a few years, then the rest went out. 

But to be fair, we tend not to buy high-end trees. Maybe lights on those last longer. 

[Corraleno]

4 hours ago, busymama7 said:

Lit are wonderful until they aren't.  

Exactly this. 

I bought a beautiful prelit tree that was perfect for a few years and then the strands started going out one by one, so I was having to add new strands over the old ones, and by the time all the original strands were dead it looked really messy with all the dead lights plus all new lights that had been haphazardly added one string at a time. But it's a really good, very realistic tree, in great condition except for the lights, so two Christmases ago I pulled off all the added light strings and then began the task of removing all the "prelit" strings  — strings that were attached with hundreds and hundreds of tiny, hard, plastic clips, each of which needed to be individually cut with wire cutters, and hundreds of feet of wire that needed to be cut off and pulled out. That project took DAYS, and by the time I finished my hands hurt so badly I could barely hold a coffee cup.

When restringing it from scratch I was able to add even more lights than it originally came with, perfectly distributed throughout the tree, and now it looks even better than when I bought it. And if a string goes out I can easily just pull that one out and replace it since the wire is just wound around the branches instead of being attached with a bazillion stupid little clips.

I would never ever buy another prelit tree, because it's such an unbelievable PITA to remove all the lights once they die, and I think it's incredibly wasteful to toss a perfectly good tree, and add all that plastic to the landfill, just because the lights burned out. To me that's like throwing out a lamp every time the bulb needs to be replaced. It took a couple of hours to restring the tree myself, but that was vastly less time than it took to remove all the preinstalled dead lights. And I don't remove the lights when I put the tree away, so once it's done it's the same as having a prelit tree — but cheaper, more customizable, and much easier to maintain.

[Clarita]

3 hours ago, Corraleno said:

When restringing it from scratch I was able to add even more lights than it originally came with, perfectly distributed throughout the tree, and now it looks even better than when I bought it. And if a string goes out I can easily just pull that one out and replace it since the wire is just wound around the branches instead of being attached with a bazillion stupid little clips.

Does this mean you just keep your lights on the tree when you store it? If you do how does that work?

[Corraleno]

52 minutes ago, Clarita said:

Does this mean you just keep your lights on the tree when you store it? If you do how does that work?

I have a heavy-duty fabric case/cover that you pull up from the bottom to cover the entire tree, with zippers and compression straps to compact it a bit, plus a drawstring at the top. We zip it up and store the whole tree upright in the garage after Christmas, and then next year we bring it in, unbuckle/unzip the cover, pull the cover down around the bottom, and hide it under a tree skirt. But the way I did the lights, each section has its own strings (I didn't use one string across multiple sections), so I could break it down if I needed to just by disconnecting the lowest string in in the top section from the top string in the middle section, etc. 

This is the closest photo I can find to the one I have:

[Janeway]

On 7/21/2024 at 3:54 PM, Carol in Cal. said:

See, exactly.  Think about how fast a string of lights stops working, and then imagine having to throw away your entire tree when it does.

I always end up going through and spending hours cutting off the lights that have gone out.

[Arcadia]

We don’t mind pre-lit for Christmas trees that are at most 5 feet tall. Luckily we could just replace the bulbs that blow on the pre-lit tree easily as I am the shortest person in the house (5’1”). For Christmas trees that are 6 to 8 feet tall, I rather go with those without lights. It is hard to find which bulbs have blown until it is dismantled and you plug in the tree parts by parts. 

[athena1277]

The ease of a pre-lit tree would be great, but I refused to buy one when we have bought artificial trees.  We use a tree for many years and I know pre-lit lights wouldn’t last.  I grew up helping my dad put lights on a cut tree, so I learned how to do it fairly easily and make it look good.  Ornaments take so much longer than lights.  That’s what needs to not be redone every year!

[lynn]

I love having a pre lit tree that I can set for white/multi or alternating.  The one I have now we've had for over 5 years and the lights are still bright.  

[LifeLovePassion]

We are not pre-lit people. Last year we splurged and bought twinkly lights when they were on sale. They are app controlled and do a lot of different cool things. 

[Ellie]

We didn't get one until a few years ago; and the reason we bought this one is that the lights were LED, which Mr. Ellie says will not burn out. It's a lovely tree, and putting it up takes only a few minutes. We've had it for six or seven years now, and we're still happy with it.