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Every year, Gatlinburg, Tenn., goes all-out during the holidays, festooning downtown trees, lamp posts and storefronts with millions of glittering, colored lights.

This coming holiday season, the lights will look even more dazzling than they have in years past. That’s because Gatlinburg now uses LED lights instead of traditional incandescent bulbs.

“We’ve heard comments that they’re more attractive and classier than the traditional lights,” says Dave Perella, executive director of the Gatlinburg Dept. of Tourism.

Light-emitting diodes have been around for about 30 years, and until recently have been best known for supplying the light for the numbers on digital alarm clocks and the displays on televisions, DVD players, stereos and other appliances. In the last five years though, technology has created LED light bright enough, and polychromatic enough, to work as holiday lights.

“They used to be just indicators, and now they are illuminators,” says Jordon Papanier, marketing manager at Ledtronics, a Torrance, Calif.-based manufacturer of LED holiday lights.

For homeowners, there’s good news, and not-so-good news, when it comes to using LED lights during the holidays. The good news, especially for environmentally minded homeowners, is that LED lights use 70 to 90 percent less energy than their predecessors. A string of incandescent holiday lights consumes 157.5 watts an hour, while the same string of LED lights uses 12.5 watts per hour, Perella says.

Their construction - a semiconductor chip encased in epoxy, compared to an incandescent light’s thin shell of glass around a delicate filament - also gives them a long life. In fact, LED lights last 50,000 to 100,000 hours, compared to 2,000 for a traditional bulb. (In other words, chances are you won’t pull LEDs out of storage, only to find that half of the lights have expired over the summer.)

Less energy and longer lives mean that LED lights are cost-effective, especially for homeowners who love to use lots of lights. Another benefit: Because they use less energy, the lights are cool to the touch, and therefore safer.

Tree Tips

Butterball offers bewildered cooks help at Thanksgiving, and now there’s a hotline for holiday decorators who’ve found themselves tangled in lights.

Ulta Lit Tree Company, a Glenview, Ill.-based lighting company, has launched its holiday hotline: 1-888-ULTA-LIT. Early-bird decorators can call the hotline from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (CST) weekdays before Thanksgiving; it will be open seven days a week beginning the day after Thanksgiving. Operators will be equipped to help callers repair holiday lights.

Meanwhile, follow these tips from John DeCosmo, president of Ulta Lit, for a sparkling, brilliantly lit holiday tree.

Image courtesy Ledtronics, Inc.

Make sure the wire between the lights doesn’t show. To do this, position a bulb at the end of the branch. Wrap excess wire down that branch, then up the next branch until you get to the tip. Position the bulb, and repeat. DeCosmo says lighting experts use strands with at least six inches of wire between bulbs to achieve this affect.

If using incandescent bulbs, work over a carpet to minimize breakage.

Plug in the lights before putting them on the tree. This way, you can see if any lights are out, and you can also keep track of how well you’re covering the tree.

Use strings of light. Resist the temptation to throw a net of lights over your tree. They’re designed for outdoor use, and won’t adequately light your indoor tree.Use enough lights. The rule of thumb is at least 100 lights per foot. So, a 7-foot tree needs, at minimum, 700 lights. • Top down or bottom up? It doesn’t matter, DeCosmo says. But, put on the lights before festooning the tree with ornaments, tinsel or garland.

Be safe: If you have a real tree, turn off the lights before bed and before leaving the house. And remember to water the tree religiously: A dry tree is a dangerous tree.

LED lights are weatherproof, and perform well both inside and outside. Outside, they look better if there’s not a lot of competition from landscape lighting or streetlights. Inside, use them the same way you’d use a string of incandescent lights.

The lights can be somewhat difficult to find, and they’re more expensive than old-fashioned incandescent lights. LED holiday lights can cost up to $30 a strand, compared to $6 or $7 for traditional lights.

And, Papanier cautions, you get what you pay for: Less expensive LED strings feature red and yellow bulbs, not the more costly greens and blues.