Personally I can't stand coloured lights at all for christmas and go for all white (and all the same colour temperature - you can't mix cold and warm) but I love waiting for these video's each year, it's so ridiculous that these are not already widely available given how many white sets are made.
My mother-in-law bought a new tree with LED's and nearly returned it last year until I told her I had watched the video from last year JUST the day prior. She put clear nail polish on each LED and it IMMENSELY reduced the hard light spots from each LED. So seriously, thank you for the legitimately useful experimentation!
I think you just cracked it. The entire Christmas light industry also goes through a No Effort November each year. It just so happens that's when their entire production run has to take place.
I wonder if he spends all of November painting light strands which is why he has no additional effort for November. If someone sol es the light issue would November then have to change? 😂
In Sweden, all lighting around Christmas is either actual candles or made to imitate candles. I didn't realize how deeply this matters to me until I went to Lithuania for a December choir gig and everything was a cold blue. The entire point of December is to feel that you're fighting Darkness itself armed only with fire and a deeply rooted hope for another spring.
Exactly. The warmness feeling you get from seeing a color that’s reminiscent of fire compared to the cold daylight mimicry that is the harsh blues and greens
Those ghastly all-blue sets of lights were inexplicably popular in the UK a few years ago. They were everywhere. Least-festive Christmas decorations ever! They seem to have quickly fallen out of fashion but there are still some around.
I remember back in the day we had christmas trees with actual candles in them… And we lived in a house made of wood 🤦♂️ it was just asking to be burned alive but luckily that never happened to us 🥳
Hobby mini painter here: you will 100% want to put at least some clear, if not gloss varnish on any acryllic-painted lights. It'll do yeoman's work protecting them from yellowing and weather, and gloss coats can help avoid sun bleaching. A hair dryer should be enough for heat-treating most paints. If you want to get the most out of that airbrush, pick up some acryllic thinner and medium and experiment with different thinner/medium/paint ratios (thinner and medium can also replace water and PVA glue with potentially better, more consistent results compared to your milk glass method, done correctly).
I'd also say trying other paints would be an idea, that set looked more opaque than other transparent paints I've used (SMS and Tamiya both come to mind for clear, consistent coats. And Gaia but getting that outside of Japan is uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh).
Wait, could I do this with lightbulbs, too? I'm kinda assuming probably not because you have to heat it to apply it? I would love to be able to make my own colored lightbulbs.
Given his usual concerns about efficiency, it's really weird that he decided to fix something by making it 98% less efficient. It's rare, but I think he's objectively wrong on this one.
Pointing out the true tone is not a sponsor just made me realize the shocking lack of sponsorship is channel has. I think that's part of why I find them such a joy to watch.
Perhaps, true tone will get the hint with Alec’s not so subtle steer towards a letter writing campaign and will sponsor a video, when they see the copious amounts of fan letters and do it. Alec would do the video in any case, after they make the concept a reality, but should get paid for it. It would be a mutually beneficial relationship and quite practical and effical advertising from the viewer perspective as long as he is permitted to say what he truly believes, which is another reason true tone should bring him onboard early.
Considering those war thunder/spammy mobile games can pay 10-100k for a single spot in a channel of alecs size, you really gotta respect his integrity.
I think this is a really interesting cultural race against time; a lot of people who grew up with only or mostly the incandescent strings will have the same color preferences as Alec, but younger people growing up with the current LED colors will be acquiring an equally strong association with those lights. Whatever demand pressure may currently exist for LEDs that mimic old incandescents, the more time passes without them being available, the more the winds of nostalgia will start pushing the opposite direction.
Or maybe they will associate the incandescent palette with their grandparents and later in life will seek them due to nostalgia? As well perhaps in some short time the technology that we use for standard light bulbs will filter down to Christmas lights and will again became standard. I think that current issues originates from two factors. Cheap LEDs, that will produce uniform, unnatural light and are rather suited for various effects or as control lights. And that people in different parts of the world have different preferences in colours.
When synthesizer keyboards were new, there was a gradual effort to make them sound like acoustic instruments. But even in an era where most “cheap” keyboards can sound like pianos, and computers can sound like orchestras with Spitfire or Berlin libraries, people are still very much invested in making new bleeps and bloops, as well as imitating the classic units from the 1980s. Gen Z fans of 1980s music admire it as retro, not as the radical music of the future. Anyone who makes music on a laptop could tell you about the cultural impact of the Serum plugin, which makes no effort to provide a means of imitating an orchestra, instead acting like a 1980s synth on steroids… and the FM audio technology responsible for the dubstep sounds of Skrillex is the same technology powering the DX7, responsible for so many clear 1980s sounds. I’m curious what someone who grew up without electricity would have thought about seeing incandescent bulbs for the first time, given that they can be as intense as shaded daylight, yet lacking in the blues.
This assumes the naive, discredited "blank slate" theory where every single cultural or social preference is imagined to be the result of pure conditioning within a boundless soup of accidental variation. It isn't. Harsh lights are harsh because they hurt our eyes. Headaches are headaches because they cause pain. Cultural variation is not infinite. There are many preferences that are the result of physical and biological mechanisms. Even the joke Alec made in the middle about the association of green and red with Christmas versus pinks and baby blues with Easter being "objectively correct", is not really a joke. There are objective reasons those color associations won't ever be switched: green is the color of evergreen trees, red is the color of all winter berries. Light pinks and baby blues are the color of spring flowers and robin eggs and etc. These aren't accidents of cultural conditioning, they are imposed by external realities. It is funny to imagine for purposes of speculative fiction, in the way that science fiction writers used to/often still do falsely imagine natural selection can result in infinite bizarre variations (in reality: no, they can't, evolutionary variation is constrained to follow along rigidly strict morphological constraints imposed by universal physical laws), but the world simply doesn't work that way. Broad populations will not be conditioned to prefer harsh, neuralgia-inducing lights just because that's what they had growing up. Given technology available cheaply, manufacturers will likely produce better-looking colored LED lights the same way they have produced better-looking warm white ones. And they are better looking due to the biological hardware we are born with, not due to blank-slate conditioning.
@jasondashney This has been discredited. People who grew up with hair metal may have some sort of nostalgic association with it, but they do not respond to surveys indicating they actually think hair metal was the best music. It's just another myth that's the result of this false "blank slate" meme that just won't die despite thorough debunking.
I feel the same way. Last year I was sent several strands of LED Christmas Lights to test and review. I would say most had Pastel colors and I just could not stand them. Purple, Pink, Baby Blue I thought these are Easter Lights. I have been waiting for LED's in C9 and C7 to look like the old time VINTAGE INCANDESCENT. Tru-Tone looks great but the price is crazy high. I did get some off Amazon that looked good. Now just slowly replacing my GE Incandescent strings from the 70's that are still going after 40+ years. But like Alec said, when you have several strands of C9 GE Incandescent strands powered up the light bill goes through the roof.
You honestly have no idea how soothing this channel is to me. The way you care so much about stuff like this validates me so much lmao, I always feel alone otherwise
It's SO refreshing to know I'm not the only one who's been in search of LED equivalents to the classic incandescent Christmas lights! Tru-Tone really did it. They have a lifetime customer here.
I was literally thinking last night about when a new holiday light video would come out! Much more enjoyable than listening to Mariah Carey's "All I want..."
YES to all of this. I was driving home last night and I saw what was on display and literally asked myself "what the heck?". I remember the blue incandescent lights on our Christmas tree in the 90s and it's absolutely not the same. Glad I'm not the only one!
Do blue Christmas lights kinda hurt when you look at them? I started having this problem and it's only the blue Christmas lights and certain blueish headlights that do it.
Yeah it just kind of looks weird like a gaming PC is exactly what I thought. I mean that’s cool if that’s like what younger people will become nostalgic for. I don’t wanna poo poo stuff others like but I would prefer more warm colors and like my old school stuff 😅 you know like have an option for people like me too. It’s my happy nostalgic warm cozy Christmas time! I’m already in Florida we don’t get snow let me have my cute Christmas lights 😂
@@dahken417I always wondered as a kid why the green and blue lights were so dark, and I wished they were brighter. Turns out, no I don't. The light that those two colours emit is so stark and cold, my festive coloured lights don't stay on for longer than a few minutes a day during Christmas season
I wish I was aware of this sooner! During the first half of the video, I kept thinking "lacquer and a spray gun, lacquer and a spray gun!", and then you got so close! The problem you're having with those paints, especially the red, is that they contain pigment instead of dye. Dye is a lot more expensive, so isn't present in entry level paints, but it's fully transparent. I can personally recommend Stewart MacDonald's alcohol dyes, as I've been using them for transparent color finishes for 15 years. Pricey, but they last _forever_ . You'd start with a lacquer, thinned 50/50 with acetone. Then for the concentrations you need, you want to pour some of the dye into a wide glass dish and let the alcohol evaporate until dry, so you're not altering the solvent mix of the lacquer too much. Then, mix the dyes in, testing the strength as you go, and removing the lacquer with acetone between tests (If they're plastic "bulbs" you'd want to test them first, or test with a glass bulb instead, as acetone could attack the plastic). Once you have the concentration right, spray away! The tinted lacquer will be perfectly transparent at any reasonable concentration. It won't tolerate outdoor usage as well, but it should last a few seasons outdoors until somebody manufactures what you're looking for. Should last a very long time indoors. Over time, the lacquer might crackle a bit, which would honestly be a very nice looking effect. To hold the bulbs, what comes to mind is the sleeve that holds the cartridges upright in a plastic case of .22 ammo. Not sure if you'd be able to buy just the sleeves or empty cases, but it's worth a look. I probably have a few I'd be happy to ship you.
From a nail tech. There are transparent gel polishes available (aliexpress too) which are both dark in color, and still transparent. I used them many times and they work great. Plus, they can also be diluted with isopropyl alcohol to maoe liquid enough to airbrush on (again used this technique and it works great in nailart). Plus being a uv resin based, the color should be quite durable, the lights could even be dipped in some good no wipe top coat which would make the final product stronger.
Thank you for your reply. I need to paint a clear turn signal bulb into an amber color but I can't figure out how. I hadn't thought about nail gel polishes.
I came to say exactly this! When he showed the impulse- buy airbrush kit that's when it hit me. The possibilities are truly endless! I'm picturing glittery dip powders too but that might be over the top, even for Alec, or completely undesirable to him.
For the airbrushing solution, if you're looking to dramatically increase the durability and colour-staying power, try an airbrush varnish! When applied properly it doesn't effect the colour (So I assume the light output would go mostly unchanged) and it's what's commonly used for miniature painting to protect models from grubby dirty gamer fingers. As an added bonus, it can be applied after drying, each colour, so it doesn't add much to your current process.
I've just been using Pledge Future floor polish for my topcoat, but they apparently discontinued that formula and it's hard to find a good replacement. (luckily I have a lot and it goes a long way)
Alec, can you please put all the Christmas lights videos into a playlist? The should be together so we can easily watch all of them as a holiday tradition. 😊
Hey Alec! We fixed your problem, our VintaGlo line of Christmas lights are what you are looking for... And our Yule Multi Mix is your preferred 4-color Multi :)
I love that this man found his niche. And an audience. I really like the breaking down of highly technical things I've never really known how they worked. Idk. It's brings a warmth that the audience is broad enough and kind enough that this channel can exist
If you want to give this a shot again, certain hobby paint manufacturers make clear paints specifically meant to be used for clear plastic. Tamiya makes some acrylic based paints that work really well with an airbrush. I would give one of those a shot. The paints you use look opaque before applied; the paints I'm thinking about look clear even coming out of the bottle.
I think that's just the problem. Alec has learned to use opaque paints because anything that starts off looking transparent just isn't dark enough of a pigment to achieve the color and brightness that he's looking for.
@@AlextheHistorian the paints I'm referring to aren't all that bright when applied correctly. They're used frequently to make white LEDs look red/green/ whatever color you want the light to actually be. And now that he has an airbrush, he can do multiple light coats to achieve that darker transparent effect he's going for.
I found a light up Santa on the curb whose paint is fading. It’s definitely translucent paint. I was thinking about this last night. Thank you for sharing brands.
Several years ago, people began replacing the incandescent bulbs in their pinball machines with LEDs (there are generally about 100 individual bulbs in a pinball machine). This had many advantages -- they last longer, they generate less heat to warp plastics, they put less stress on ancient board components because they consume less power, and they emit less EV radiation (helping preserve the art on the playfield). BUT LEDs are also very harsh. It's not just that they're bright, it's that they transition from off to on instantly (well, nearly so, and many, many times faster than an incandescent bulb does). On a pinball machine, where the lights are constantly blinking, this harsh binary transition from off to on is very hard on the eyes. (there are also other technical issues with old pinball machine lamp matrices that cause LEDs to erroneously light up at times, due to the presence of tiny amounts of current that the original incandescent bulbs didn't react to -- this is called "ghosting" in pinball circles). Also, since AC power in the US operates at 60hz, the LEDs are actually blinking on and off 60 times per second. Incandescent bulbs didn't have enough time to cool down between those 60-times-per-second pulses, but with LEDs, this creates an almost subliminal flickering effect that gives some people headaches, and results in a generally harsh perception even if you don't consciously register why. To solve this, my friend Harold created a brilliant boardset called "LED OCD" and "GI OCD" which caught on like wildfire in the pinball community. Maybe you could create or posit something similar for Christmas lights. The LED OCD board makes LEDs look softer and fade smoothly like incandescents. It sits between the driver board and the controlled LEDs (generally the ones under the inserts on the playfield), and it does a few things -- first it re-drives the controlled LEDs at 250hz instead of 60hz, so that they don't flicker (LEDs don't have time to cool down in one 250th of a second). This also allows it to control transition states smoothly. It modifies the duty cycle of each light at a specific user-specified brightness and fade profile for absolute smoothness. The GI OCD board is for the General Illumination of the pinball machines (strings of lights that just generally light up the game). This one works by converting the power from AC to DC and using pulse width modulation to smoothly control the brightness of the LEDs. It can't make the bulbs themselves more diffusive, obviously, but that is a problem manufacturers could easily solve with decent quality frosted bulb covers (pinball LED manufacturers sell a multitude of varieties that work great). You can find more info about these boards by googling their name. CometPinball can no doubt put you in contact with Harold, their creator, if you want to learn more as well.
The blinking LEDs in a pinball machine would drive me crazy at 60Hz or 120Hz. 250Hz wouldn’t cut it either since your eyes are following the ball bouncing around the board. You’d see dots all over your field of view. I’ve been complaining about automotive tail lights (and sometimes brake lights, marker light, or daytime driving lights) that use PWM at low frequencies (roughly 60-500). I believe there should be laws changed to put a minimum of 1000Hz on those lights. Because of rapid eye movement, the pinball lights would also be best above 1000Hz too. I’ve seen very few automotive lights with PWM that fast, but they do exist. So, another helpful approach is to add a capacitor in parallel with the LED to smooth the instant on/off to give it more of a warm-up/cool-down effect which LEDs don’t have. You’d have to go way, WAY higher frequency before LED would have any fade-up/down time. Remember, LEDs are semiconductors just like the microchips that are controlling them which can operate at kHz, MHz, GHz! Also note that a very simple device like a typical IR remote control has its LED turning on and off around 38,000 times per second for the carrier frequency and then the data that’s modulated on that carrier is much slower. For common situations, LEDs simply don’t fade on/off. The capacitors would help.
Many LED bulbs take a bit of to time to turn off, but its actually the power supplies powering the LEDs that take a while to turn off, due to power supplies having a tiny bit of energy storage that isnt drained instantly. Incadecent bulbs have a tiny bit of energy storage of their own, in the form of thermal energy in the hot filiment, which is what makes incadecent bulbs take a bit of time to turn off. LEDs on their own do not have energy storage, and so can turn off extremely quickly. P. S. LED bulbs with failing power supplies do sometimes like to demonstrate rapid flickering, so there is that.
I've never had a need for an air brush.... I use a comb. I laughed for well over a minute at this. These little gems of humor thrown in are one of the reasons I love watching your videos. Keep it up!
Alec oozes personality and has such a refreshingly honest and relatable voice. He can make a 20 minute video on lights and dishwashers entertaining as well as educational.
I'm on the total opposite end of this. I find the topics really interesting and appreciate the deep dives and quality editing, but his voice and delivery are terribly grating.
PLEASE DON'T GIVE UP!! It's refreshing to see I'm not alone in wanting LED Christmas lights that look like traditional incandescents. I gave up trying to find a solution for LEDs. I still use my incandescents because they just look so much better. I have been considering investing in a set of Twinkly Strings, but I can't stand those retina searing LEDs on my Christmas Tree.If Tru Tone would make them, I will definitely buy a set or 30.
The best part of all of this is that in 30 years people will be all nostalgic about their pure wavelength super bright LED lights that they can't find anymore, and these dull soft-colored ones just don't feel like xmas at all.
T5 Silicone Light Bulb Lamp Colored Caps Covers Boot - you can put these on the warm white LEDS :) Theese were in my Suzuki Swift Dashboard :) I replaced the lights with LED-s, these fitted nicely on the led-s also
I agree. However... You would LOVE Tru-Tone lights. White light with colored bulb, just like incandescent. They are truly just as good. And I can drive 5 strings (125 lights) together for less than 75 watts!
Thank you for explaining something I had no words for. Something just BUGGED me about the colored LED strands I see around my neighborhood, but I couldn’t explain WHY until this video. Thanks so much!
Rosco Colorine is what you want! Used in theatrical lighting design, it’s literally what you’re trying to recreate - a paint designed to dip lamps in to colour them. The only issue would be getting hold of it, I think it’s discontinued, but a theatrical or scenic chandler/supplier might have some in stock still. I’d recommend some to you, but I’m in the UK, I wouldn’t know who to suggest in the USA
The biggest challenge with trying to make authentic looking multi-colored LED bulbs is that everyone forgets that the colors used to pigment the glass of the incandescent ones aren't pure colors either. The blue is practically indigo, the green is a forest green, and the red has hints of fuchsia. All because they're trying to counteract the yellowish hue of the bulb filament within. It only kinda-sorta works, which is why you get such an interesting spectra of light from such bulbs.
I love how unhinged this gets. Your science videos and light explainers are what brought me in, but I also really appreciate how you work to capture the aesthetics of yesteryear with the advantages of modern technology. It feels really grounded and reasonable until you see the lengths you are willing to go through to accomplish this goal, like a paladin with a really obscure oath. Thank you so much for your content. Edit: I also really hate the way the LED blue almost makes things feel darker.
@@davidg4288 I have never heard that before, but it makes sense. I've always disliked LEDs because I thought the LED lights didn't illuminate the area around them well enough, but from what you're saying the real reason is that they're too intense and the contrast makes the surrounding area appear darker. Thanks for the insight.
@@whistlingsage9817I think what they're actually saying is that blue light (especially the pure blue light from an LED) makes your brain think it's daytime, so your eyes try to adjust for sunlight despite the fact that it's actually still night.
@@nikkiofthevalley That's an interesting idea. I guess I can only say with certainty that LED Christmas lights look cold and un-illuminating to me, and for some reason I prefer the light from incandescent bulbs.
@@whistlingsage9817 Also some LEDs have a poor color rendition index (CRI), it's not a continuous spectrum. If the object you're trying to see doesn't reflect that particular spectrum it will be dark. Like trying to find a red or green or yellow object using a blue LED flashlight. An LED or CFL may look white but isn't. Check the CRI if you want to use the LED for general illumination. Obviously this doesn't apply to holiday decorations. I think Technology Connections may have a video on this.
YES. THANK YOU. I can't stand how all the colours are shifted so far over to the cool side of the spectrum. It is SO nice to see another human being who feels the same way about these terrible lights. The "warm" colours look SO entirely wrong, and the "cool" colours are unbearable eye stabbers. Then, on top of that, I can often see their flicker. The flicker is always either super blatant to me, or hangs out just at the edge- where I can't quite "see" it per se, but I can still notice its presence. Which is also maddening. My boyfriend shakes his head at me, whenever I go off about these things- but I go off on those tangents because we have the technology to fix it! This doesn't have to be an issue. It is TOTALLY rectifiable, yet almost nobody is bothering to do it. Gah!
The “storefront with a chasing LED sign letting you know they have CBD oil” dig might be the truest thing you’ve ever said 😅 The shameful, lazy ways LEDs get used drives me insane, you make me feel just slightly less neurotic and I thank you for it.
Back when LED signs were finally made cheap & available enough, many stores didn't know how to program the message, so the signs often displayed the stock demo message out of the box. 😄
You perfectly explained something I subconsciously noticed for years but never put my finger on, that modern coloured lights just don't have that same warm Christmasy feeling as they used to
I've been ranting about LED Christmas lights to everyone I know, and I'm pretty sure they all think I'm crazy. Just happy to know that another person out there in the world is also bothered by them!!
Same! I hate the blue ones most of all, and cannot understand why they're so popular. I felt so vindicated by the scientific explanation at the start of this video.
A man after my own heart! I'm in the UK, so I grew up with cosy strands of incandescent lights that came in six colours: red, yellow, blue, green, orange and pink. It's likely that the Noma lights you mention at the end of the video come in this combination, so I wouldn't worry that it'll be all pastel and Easter-looking, because traditionally the oranges and pinks in UK-style Christmas lights would be just as bright as the other colours and I expect that's the look Noma is trying to replicate. I actually had no idea that you wouldn't normally have had those in old incandescent sets in America, but I have wondered over the past couple of decades (god, that dates me) why the new-style LED light sets always stuck so rigidly to four colours. I feel like they look too harsh, especially the blue - I bought a set last year that had equal numbers of all four colours, yet red was much less apparent on the finished tree and the blues and greens stood out intensely. For what it's worth, I find "warm white" LEDs a lot more tolerable, and oddly purple strands can look a lot calmer than blue (though you never seem to see purple in the multicolour strands, you can sometimes find it on its own), so I often use them inside Christmas village buildings.
When I was little (I'm old now) I used to help my mother put round, white, "fabric" covers over the incandescent Christmas tree lights. It made the lights look like they were glowing under snow. It was a very pretty affect. I didn't know, until much until later, they were actually made of asbestos (so they didn't catch on fire from the heat of the bulbs). The things we do for holiday decorations!
I am so glad there's someone else out there who feels the same way I do about fairy lights and will go to the same lengths that I would to get modern LED lights to look like the lights of my childhood.
You nailed this 1000% I have been saying this for years, modern LED christmas lights look nothing like classic christmas lights, some of them look more like Halloween colors instead. What makes true classic vintage christmas colors are the light pastel pink, pastel red, pastel blue, pastel green, pastel yellow. Even better when they come with multiple pattern changing colors and the vintage music christmas player.
I‘m actually amazed, we here in germany have „Lampenlack“ a lacquer especially made for incandescent lightbulbs… so if I‘d were to try I‘d just buy Lampenlack and dip the LED. Oh and yes it is available in green, blue, red and yellow as well as a few other colors. (Orange for example 😉)
German really is the ultimate language for compound words. Do that in English, and you get "Lamplaq". Eew. Looks like an esoteric brand of whitening toothpaste--all wrong. In German, you just smash words together and it works, apparently. "Weltschmerz". Works. English: "Worldpain". Nope. "World-weary" works, but only because of hyphen.
since I shouldn't link anything.. it's easiest to search for "EAN: 4016138187908" that should yield a few results for a set of six colors "bulp dipping paint" .. and conrad (a german retailer that should be one of the results) ships worldwide and yes you can also buy individual colors of course...
...odd.. fairly certain I already mentioned that... aaanyways again [just in case] the searchterm would be "Clou TLK20" I used said red on my car for decades.. worked flawlessly
These videos have become a Christmas tradition at this point. I'm not sure if I hope that some manufacturer creates something to satiate Alec or that nothing ever materializes and Alec just has to keep trying different techniques to keep the videos coming. I am glad to see that the airbrush method looks to be the most promising so far.
The Noma lights featured near the end of the video seem like at least one manufacturer is on the right track due to the bulb caps being replaceable. Looks like they're only available in the UK though?
If I had legal access to Alec's property (or work cubicle if he had one) I'd definitely be pranking him with a huge eye-watering blue LED display! Possibly on Halloween or April Fools. Fortunately I will never have such access.
"Gamer vomit" is a perfect descriptor. This year I caught up on several years' worth of these LED Christmas lights videos, and I never realized exactly WHY I disliked the modern ones, but I realized that I find myself sensitive to blue light even in my own house with an RGB bulb. It is the pure blue light that I realize hurts my eyes. And yeah when driving around the other night, I noticed how BLUE all the lights in people's yards were. It's so overpowering!
The length you had to go to get this project done is giving me a much needed confirmation I am not alone in my weirdness. Even better is the fact that this video has over 900 k views. That's quite comforting, to be honest.
Got my hands on some Tru-Tone this year because they werent instantly sold out. Deeply impressed and bought way in, Even have some 40-year old strands and put them side-by-side for comparison and damn, they are spot on in terms of color tone and lumens output. Can almost not tell new from old.
I also got a set. Ordered a box of red, green, and white classic color bulbs. As well as the red and green wires. They look amazing. Nice warm tones. Really stands out against the other houses and their LEDs.
As a miniature painter who uses paints through an airbrush, and also a Christmas light fan, I strongly support this endeavor! I suggest spraying a clear varnish on the lights to greatly improve durability.
I was going to suggest the same thing, but I believe Createx paints are polyurethane. EDIT: Nevermind, I was thinking of one of the additive formulas that you can mix with their paints. These are water based acrylics when used alone, so a clear coat would be good for protection.
Random thought for the painting jig, if you ever get around to the larger scale painting: instead of a single jig to hold the ones you're painting, try making a jig to hold the whole strand, plus a stencil to cover ¾ of the bulbs, so you can just move the stencil down one bulb distance each time you want to switch colors.
@@dwren365 Using sides of a box wouldn't work too well, I think, since the goal is to have four colors in a pattern (rgbyrgbyrgby...) rather than in a row (rrr...ggg...bbb...yyy...) with each bulb only a few inches apart. You'd need a very long, very thin box to pull that off, and it'd probably be a pain to set up even then.
Could not possibly agree more. We bought our very first set of LED lights for the tree last year. My initial joy at the prospect of finally having a long lasting set that wouldn't drive me crazy was short lived as they lit up the living room like the Vegas strip.
Try UV-curable resin. It's pretty thick, so it sticks well, and you can easily do multiple coatings. And the best of all, just shine a UV light on it and it's ready within seconds. I'm using it myself with fluorescent dyes to create vibrant red and orange colors from blues.
Ah, I remember when LED holiday lights started to emerge and I remember being repulsed by their overly blue profile. The blues and greens dominated, and like you, warmth is a great importance. True Tone are great lamps! Need to invest in some, when I buy holiday lights next. Great video, as always.
My biggest annoyance with the blue-shift in Christmas lights is that they look "cold". I just really like the warmth of traditional bulbs. They look cozy during a cold time of year.
I was discussing just this with my friend the other day. I'm fortunate to have relatively cheap electricity here in the PNW and have around 1.5kW of vintage C9 and C7 lights on my house and a tree out front. My house really stands out on my street because it looks so warm and festive while the houses around it with LED Christmas lights look cold and dreary and most of them flicker too. I was an early adopter of LED lighting and had switched my house almost entirely by around 2011 despite the high cost at the time but after trying LED Christmas lights briefly I went back to incandescent.
I don’t know if it’s a Canadian tire exclusive brand or not but Noma up here in Canada makes some decent led Christmas lights. They have a pattern of red, yellow, orange then blue then it goes red,orange,yellow and green and so on. So you have half the green and blues of most sets but you get a nice warm glow illuminating the area.
I do theatrical lighting, and if I had a light that was too bright and too blue, I would use an orange color correction (also known as CTO) and a neutral density (gray) gel. If you put those together, you get a brown gel, that pushes the color warmer and cutting down the brightness. Now, I know that modern day gel is plastic sheets, so maybe going back to the paint or nail polish in a translucent brown may help knock things down to what you're looking for!
Lighting design student here, I was wondering if gels and some tape would work, or LEDs with better color mixing to get better approximations. I've personally been investigating twinkly brand lights to see if better color mixing can be achieved with them. We'll see when they arrive in a few days
I've wondered, to tone-down the "laser blue," is to try dabbibg some of that yellow transparent paint over them. That might make them "less blue" and less bright (without making them too greenish). Or it'll totally backfire and make the yellow fluoresce too much. I dunno. 🤪 LOL
If someone manufacturers and sells what Alec wants (small Christmas light strands with warm white LED bulbs underneath warm-tone green, red, yellow, and blue covers), I can guarantee I will be a loyal customer. I hate laser-blue lights on people's houses during Christmastime. They make my eye sockets literally burn.
Apparently they pretty much already do, he showed some images of some Noma lights and their box near the end of the video. He noted that these were sent from a UK viewer though I think? I'd have to rewatch that bit and check.
THANK YOU! It feels so validating to find someone who cares about this like I do! It’s a problem and it needs solving! I am also enough of a maniac to get out the airbrush for this task. Appreciate your efforts.
Just a heads up: If you decide (or need to) try resin again, get some UV resin instead of epoxy resin. You can set it in about a minute with a black light and could theoretically build up a few coats of it pretty quickly to get the right level of dye you'd need for a solid dark blue. I don't think it tends to be all that runny either. A source of quality UV resin I keep coming across is Sophie and Toffee, though I haven't tried it out myself yet. One hobby at a time!
To add to this, he mentioned the resin being too ‘runny’. A lot of people in the 3D printing scene who use UV resin to smooth out FDM prints mix the resin with Corn Starch to thicken it, which makes it easier to apply and spread. Might be worth trying.
Just remember to wear gloves and use a mask/good ventilation. People in hobby crafts and 3D printing seem to underestimate it because they're not afraid of it sticking to their skin like regular 2 part resin, but it's pretty nasty stuff when uncured (see the safety data sheets).
I can’t believe how specifically identical out tastes in Christmas lights are. I’ve been trying to explain it to people for years, but couldn’t word it right. I thought I was the only one on an obsessive hunt for those exact colours. I feel like this entire video was made just for me. The past two weeks I’ve been looking for not only those warm traditional 4 colour string lights in LED, but 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 for a transparent coloured paint that comes in many colours to paint a few cylindrical lamp shades that are made up of a wall of 280 little plastic “crystals” that I wanted to paint in the colours and shapes of tetrominoes fitting together, so that the light would shine through and come out coloured on the walls. Perfect timing, perfect video, perfect information, perfect links, perfect taste in Christmas lights. Never change Alec, never change.
Man i can feel the need for the incandescent coloured ones. I actually like the amber ones because they remind me of sodium vapor and i kind of like the magenta because it is a unique colour not very used either way. The deep blue tough is unreplacable. And although i did not grow in the era where incandescent fairy lights were used, i still like them over LEDs. Maybe using chemistry i may find a cure to the deep blue for LEDs.
@@MalloryKnox. Thank you so much. Yeah, i like light bulbs simply because they are fascinating. And since my main interest is chemistry (and astro) i may combine it to make some true deep blue
@@MalloryKnox. Oh well, i actually am testing if i can youse a compund know as "prussian blue". It's a really beautiful deep blue dye chemical and i tested it in nail polish. So far result look disappointing but multi layering may do it. But i won't give up. Mostly it will be on a bucket list to try and when a idea strikes me i do it. I will make sure to share the recepie and tell you
Alec, you and Tru-Tone are both obsessed with making Christmas lights look better and I love it. I would buy Tru-Tone mini light sets! My old incandescent mini sets are getting harder to maintain every year, but they look so much better than any LED sets currently for sale.
i need to know how we can get Alec elected to public office/policymaker. every point he makes is not only well-researched and logical, but also happens to make the most sense. i can't go on road trips now without getting annoyed at car makers in 2023 that are still using a red brake light as the turn signal. so many of your videos are so founded in reason, i would just love for the world to be more like this. that includes easier-on-the-eyes LED xmas lights ;)
"i can't go on road trips now without getting annoyed at car makers in 2023 that are still using a red brake light as the turn signal" -- I can totally relate. I think about his video on that topic every single day as I drive to and from work. And on weekends when I'm out.
I appreciate that someone is out there trying to bring back the true glow of Christmas lights. I hope this catches on and that some company figures out how to make them so we can purchase them at Walmart someday. Until then, I will keep trying to salvage my incandescent string-a-long light sets.
If you decide to make the airbrushed lights a regular thing, you might enjoy learning more about paint chemistry, both for the fun of it and for better results. Every pigment has different properties, not just for transparency and intensity, but also lightfastness. Reds are especially notorious for being difficult to apply, and for fading in sunlight, but if you know your requirements, you can choose the best pigments for your application. Easiest way to know what you're getting is to switch from craft airbrush paints to an artist brand like Golden High Flow Acrylics, which will list their exact pigment content on the bottle, and the full paint properties on their website.
All craft airbrush paints are criminally expensive. You get, what, three thimbles-full for $10+ dollars? And when you take into account that during airbrushing, a significant portion of the paint ends up as overspray, the cost doubles/triples/quadruples. I stick with cheap-azz tubes of acrylic from a dollar store and thin them down with homemade thinner. They work perfectly well for my needs (painting 3D-printed, functional parts...not gaming miniatures).
I used different color Sharpies on a short 3000K led strain. The results are AMAZING! Felt like rediscovering a shard of childhood. The colors are so beautiful!
Just wanted to pop in to say that I can relate to the level of holiday light insanity here and fully embrace it! My lighting theme for years now has been alternating red and white bulbs for a peppermint/candy cane theme, but the options for this were just not there when I started. My first go round (with incandescents) was buying half solid white strands and half red strands, then painstakingly swapping every other bulb, nearly destroying my fingers in the process. When those strands eventually failed and I was on the hunt for an LED replacement, I ended up using the nail polish solution myself and painting every other bulb of my white LED strands with red polish. It's been at least 2 years, maybe 3, since I did that, and the red is still going strong despite the cold snowy weather where I live! I will say, though, the exterior lights have all been north-facing, so they don't get harsh southern sun. If your airbrush solution doesn't stand up, definitely try nail polish again and do a durability test! 🙂
They sell candy cane lights here in Canada, have for years (past 15 years?). So if you can't find them where you live, try Canadian Tire haha. I started it because of my hate for the blue/green LEDs. But also wrapping my apartment balcony in candy cane ribbon gave it a pretty day time look too.
@@newtunesforoldlogos4817 This might work in some applications if you didn't mind spending extra buying twice as many lights, though for my specific use case (icicle lights), trying something like this would be a tangled mess lol. I could see it being an option for lining a straight strand on a solid surface-perhaps less so for trimming trees and bushes. But again, twice as expensive (the nail polish only cost me about $4 plus time) and maybe finicky to hang. Still, an option!
@@a_trauma_llama2991 How does Canada have all the best stuff? Poutine, and now this?! 😆 Joking aside, I have seen candy cane lights in the states becoming a bit more common, but not in icicles, and usually not LED. Maybe they've expanded the offerings since I went rogue with the nail polish, I just haven't had to look in the past few years since the nail polish has held up surprisingly well.
I've been so passionate about this for years. The blue especially hurts my eyes. Everyone else thought I was crazy, but starting last year I started doing your sharpie on the smooth white LED bulbs trick and its PERFECT, even though I have to reapply the colour every year.
I never thought about it and why I had an aversion to the multi-colored LED strings as of late until I joined Alec on his annual descent into Christmas light madness, and now I see why I've shifted towards "warm" white/non-blue white lights.
Warm white lighting makes my eyes hurt. Incan 2700K is bad enough I can't tell what color things are, and I end up rubbing my eyes constantly and having to take breaks. The sweet spot for lighting is a true neutral of around 4000K to 5000K with roughly -0.005 to -0.015 duv (i.e. slightly pink tint instead of the usual green). And it's not just me. Standards agencies have been considering an update to the definition of ANSI standard white, to require negative duv in LED lights in order to qualify for certification.
@@ToyKeeper I agree. I can't stand the warm lighting that people like and prefer to use daylight bulbs all the time. Around 4000K. If I'm at home and need mood lighting I'd rather dim them than change the color temp. It's fine on Christmas trees as that's not task lighting at all. I've not managed to make the switch to LEDS in Christmas lighting at all yet, but have contemplated LEDs that I could color cycle.
Agreed. Even as a kid I preferred white Christmas lights vs multicolored even though sometimes they were admittedly fun. But when driving past decorated houses, the displays with mostly-white were almost always my favorite. It is very hard to impress me with multicolor displays. They'd have to be done just right or only used sparingly as "trim" or "pop" amongst mostly white. And the only time I like blue-white light is for maybe icicles but, again, minimally. For general home lighting, blue / daylight looks harsh and corporate. Warm light is cozy and intimate. It also shows fewer imperfections on your walls, furniture, carpet, etc. for the slightly less tidy. 😂 Blue light is only good for museum-status homes.
@@ToyKeeper Huge respect to you for your flashlight firmware. Negative duv is the way to go. Beyond that, we all have our preferences. Unless I'm carrying a thrower, I don't carry anything cooler than 3500K during the day and 2700K at night. I love the warmth. Maybe it's because I grew up with incandescent bulbs and half-dead incan flashlights. The human eye has a way of adjusting to color temperature. I would like for some minimum CRI to be part of the ANSI standard if it isn't already.
As a person who is extremelty particular about lighting design, I thoroughly appreciate every one of your lighting videos. There aren't any other videos or channels doing these videos quite like them that I have found.
Also, white LEDs with coloured coatings (red, amber, pink, blue, green) were being sold in one of the UK's biggest department stores (John Lewis) this year! They looked great and very true to the older look!
That's interesting. I've just looked at the John Lewis web site and can't see any like that. Are they not available online? Or do you have an exact name for the lights please?
Alec wouldn't agree on the colors, though. >The coloured lights are not your standard neon blue, green, red and orange but instead are white bulbs in coloured casings (red, orange, green, blue and pink)[...].
As someone who just recently learned about having a mild degree of colorblindness (I flunked the Ishihara color test at work, which came as quite the shock), I couldn't tell you the difference among yellow, amber, or orange Christmas lights. I appreciate the pinks, purples, and teals because at least I can see those. I do love watching these videos on all the clever and outside-the-box solutions our host tries, regardless.
That must be a bizarre and somewhat disconcerting experience to find out that, oh, hey, there are all these colors that I can't discern and everyone else is doing it all the time. I assume traffic lights presented no difficulty because you know the position of the lights?
Haha, it must seem crazy to you seeing people obsess the differences between two light colours that look exactly the same. One of them if warm and friendly okay?!
Your sense of humor, your obsession and your willingness to investigate and solve these pain points, absolutely love it. Where can I find a friend in my life like you?
You might find that some of the more expensive model paints for miniature painting might give you results closer to what you're looking for. Citadel Contrast paint or Army Painter Speedpaint are very heavily pigmented but are designed to be semi-transparent to show through and display the shading underneath. Army Painter Speedpaint has better self-leveling, so you'll probably get the best result from that.
I second this. Those paints are super rich in pigment by design. And some companies (e.g.: Scale 75) create paints which are pretty close to an ink, that would probably work beautifully here. They'll richly stain the bulb even if the gravity pulls some of the paint down.
I genuinely want to him to find lights that he's happy with, but at the same time, I look forward to the holiday light video every year. If they ever solve this problem, I still hope he finds a reason to talk about his obsession with holiday lights.
I've used transparent paints a lot over the years in miniature painting, and you're exactly right that red paints tend to significantly more opaque than other colours. I'm not an expert by any means, but my understanding is it's an issue both with the pigments themselves and with how red behaves when it loses intensity (i.e. becomes very very pink rather than red). In order to get the colour saturation actually reading as red, the paints need to be a lot more pigment heavy than other transparent colours. If you ever do do this again (and I hope with you that you won't need to) I'd recommend checking out some comparisons between different paint manufacturers and how their products actually behave before buying the paint, there is an enormous amount of difference in the quality, transparency and actual colours between different manufacturers, miniature painters are pretty much always looking for the next great set of paints, and there are plenty of videos and articles out there clearly showing how each and every product performs in nearly every circumstance.
it's definitively a pigment issue. The bright red-orange pigments are mostly opaque or at best semi transparent, whereas there are very transparent magenta red-rose pigments as well as yellow ones. Probably there are red-orange transparent pigments but they aren't as UV durable so paint manufacturers avoid them. That's why in fine art painting we usually mix the magenta and yellow that are quite close to primary colors to get the right hue with transparent pigments. Just like Alec did in the video to recreate its orangeish-yellow hue but with different proportions.
Pinball machines can have different color lights, and the LED replacements are often just white LED bulbs with a colored silicone cover that you slip over top of it. I don't know if it would be possible to find those covers that fit on any type of Christmas light, but it may be worth looking into.
I’m a little surprised Alec doesn’t complain about my peeve with LED Christmas lights: the 60 Hz flickering. Glad to see built-in rectifiers are more common now.
He has in his previous Christmas light painting episodes. Full bridge rectified lights are becoming more common thankfully. I can see the flickering of cheap sets, and it gives me a headache.
You could also resin print caps for any bulb, all UV resins for 3d printers are translucent, and you can simply add alcohol pigments to clear resin After dialing in the resin and pigment combo, it’s easy to make a lot of them
Tru-Tone bulbs are indeed amazing, can confirm. I also agree on LED versus incandescent, especially with blue/purple strings that have a painful flicker.
For me, the issue with LED lights isn't the vibrancy of the color (which I like) but rather the total lack of diffusion. They are like tiny flashlights rather than tiny lamps. That, and the fact that many of them use a cheap half-wave rectifier so they are only on half the time and the 30hz blinking is noticeable when you move your eyes
Unlike incandescent bulbs that have relatively large thermal mass to keep almost constant glow, the lack of persistency in LED and the narrow conduction angle will make them pulsing at 60Hz, if there is no full bridge rectification. It won't be 30Hz (or 25Hz in EU) though as the main is 60Hz. Happy holidays
100%W agree with you on this front! I love the benefits of LED lights, but i very much dislike the colors themselves for Christmas, the old school glow of the lights is what always made me very happy.
Hello, As mentioned in other people’s comments, an artists grade airbrush paint using pigments with high transparency and light fastness might be a good solution. My suggestions for paints would be: Blue: Golden high flow acrylic, Transparent phthalo blue green shade - you can adjust this with either red or yellow to change the tone of the blue. Yellow: Golden high flow nickel azo yellow Green: Golden high flow transparent phthalo green mixed with a small amount of the yellow Red: (This is more difficult): Golden high flow transparent quinacridone red mixed with a little bit of yellow. There are other brands such as Schmincke Aero color that might also work. I haven’t use acrylic paints before but both Schmincke and Golden are highly regarded. You might also want to consider protecting the paint with some kind of clear coat. Good luck!
I was about to suggest this. You could thin any artists' acrylic paint with airbrush medium, so you aren't stuck with a limited range of colors. Da Vinci's Permanent Red (PR188) is a nice warm semi-transparent red that is lightfast. Or, if you want maximum transparency, their Quinacridone Red (PR209). Also, I have found acrylic paints are not entirely waterproof. They resist water initially but can get cloudy or delaminate if exposed for long to outdoor conditions. I would consider using a topcoat of clear epoxy resin to protect from the elements.
Been thinking exactly this. On a semi-related note, I also feel like you could make an old-style twinkling effect (as per one of his older videos) trivially with a homebrew LED controller. There is one type of LED Christmas light that I do enjoy, and that's the diffused slow-hue-changing ones. Due to manufacturing differences, each LED changes hue at a slightly different pace, making it a varied display. Definitely not traditional in any sense, but it's very pleasant-looking.
I also prefer the red, yellow, green, blue color combinations for my Christmas lights and I’m glad someone else is as disappointed in how rare that combination is to find in LED. However, the past few years, Costco has been selling LED strands manufactured by Sylvania that can switch between warm white and multi-color (with red yellow green and blue). The multi-color actually looks really good and the blue is not as bad as some blues I’ve seen.
I've seen LEDs in that combination, plus my preferred red/orange/green/blue/magenta (hey, don't blame me, it's what I grew up with) and a few others (e.g., red/orange/yellow/green/blue/magenta). They still have all the problems this video highlights with some colors looking way too harsh, and an unfortunate number of them were only available with white strings (which IMO don't look good on a green tree), but I think at this point most of the common color combinations are available in LEDs. What perplexes me is a set I saw at Target this year that had red, orange, green, blue, magenta...and then a second, ever-so-slightly lighter shade of blue. Blue's already the harshest color on the LED strings, and they went and put twice as many on the string as any other color!
My family's current Christmas tree also uses color switching LEDs. I think it may have come from Costco as well, but I can't remember. the color switching is super simple but pretty reliable. the strands run on DC and each light bulb has two LEDs in parallel with each the reverse polarity of the other. just reversing the polarity of the DC power going in makes one set of LEDs go out and the other turn on. a little foot switch turns the whole tree on and off, and a little inline controller box switches colors and also enables slow fading in and out or blinking of either color. The tree is also really quick to set up since all the electrical connections between the sections are made with very large co-axial power connectors inside the central tubes, so just assembling the tree means all the strands are already connected. Gone are the days when we had to try and track down all of the regular AC power plugs inside our previous tree and plug them into the power splitters in the center and having to unplug the whole tree to turn it off. we always had at least one branch that wouldn't light up no matter how many plugs we tracked down. It saves us so much time and frustration to just assemble the tree and it just works.
I'm a miniature painter and regularly use an Airbrush- never thought to give this a try for LED sets. If you do want to make the yellow a little less bright you could try hitting it with a layer of the red - one of the reasons I love airbrushing is that it's great at color blending on the surface you're painting.
Noma has always been one of the fantastic lighting companies for Christmas. If anyone can do what you're asking, it'd definitely be them. They have or have had some great products that were just different from everyone else
A general tip: use a hairdryer on a mid-heat setting to cure those paints. That shouldn't do anything significant to the plastic caps, and it makes them dry faster. Works for rattlecan paint too.
If you need to do four colors, fold the cardboard into a square tube, with 25 holes on each side. Sort all the lights into each color on the corresponding side, and tape the whole thing together. Cover the sides with shop towels while you spray one side, then repeat for the other side. It occurs to me a 3D printer using a 0.25 nozzle printing transparent PETG in various colors might allow you to simply replace the caps, or with careful measuring, fit a new, slightly larger cap over the original. Actually, I might try this this year.
Another approach for wintertime fairy lights that's overkill of a different variety is to use WS2812 ("NeoPixel") strings. As programmable RGB LEDs, the colours there can be tuned to one's preference, and with a bit more programming some classy effects are possible, such as lights individually and randomly fading in the style of "twinkle" lights (perhaps to come back as a different colour!).
My biggest AuDHD sensory joy is pretty lights, so I became used to have LEDs everywhere rather quickly, however I always look forward to this yearly segment of yours. 💜
I remember,years ago, reading an interview (perhaps it was on ArsTechnica) with a LED manufacturer. Around that time blue LEDs were the newest thing. The interviewer asked jokingly if they could make them less bright because they were getting so bright it was annoying, the manufacturer said that actually the number one request from clients was to make them brighter. So, there's that.
I love your depth of research for every video you've done. While we are on the topic of lighting, put an inline dimmer on your lava lamps. You can run them longer without overheating the wax and they'll flow real nice.
This is one of my favorite themes that you show! I have been painting nail polish on bulbs since you first showed how. I love the colors. Thank you for the new ideas!
My biggest issue with LED Christmas lights is how many seem to have PWM flicker, so whendriving by or darting your eyes around you see multiple instances of the same lights.
I easily limited the flicker by connecting them to a simple 4 diode full wave rectifer circuit. This makes the LEDs flicket at twice the frequency and be off for a much shorter time during the few degrees of phase when the voltage is too low to light the LEDs. Please don't do this unless you are very experienced with high voltage circuits, or get your mother-in-law to test it.
This was wildly entertaining. Thank you. And I struggle even with “warm” LEDs. I haven’t seen any that don’t look harsh. Ever. Their brightness seems to stick around for a half-second after I move my gaze away. So I’m hoping we have enough incandescent replacement bulbs to last until someone makes the perfect replacement. Thanks for the video!
I truly believe in the nail polish method and will be trying it this year. It really is an unsung hero of crafting as it is both durable, pigmented and can be found on the cheap. In my youth we used to use it to customise our Nokia 3310 covers and they went in and out of pockets without any issue.
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My favorite Christmas tradition is watching Alec slowly lose his sanity over the non-existence of such an obvious potential product. 🎄
Sanity? Which Alec have you been watching?
@@randomviewer3494 Is that sanity claws?
The Technology Connector has a name???
Let’s hope that they never make a satisfactory product so we can keep watching him losing his mind 😝
Personally I can't stand coloured lights at all for christmas and go for all white (and all the same colour temperature - you can't mix cold and warm) but I love waiting for these video's each year, it's so ridiculous that these are not already widely available given how many white sets are made.
My mother-in-law bought a new tree with LED's and nearly returned it last year until I told her I had watched the video from last year JUST the day prior. She put clear nail polish on each LED and it IMMENSELY reduced the hard light spots from each LED. So seriously, thank you for the legitimately useful experimentation!
It's always good to see Alec end "No Effort November" by putting too much work and going crazy in his attempt to get the perfect LED lights
I think you just cracked it. The entire Christmas light industry also goes through a No Effort November each year. It just so happens that's when their entire production run has to take place.
Now we know why its No Effort November (he's too busy OCDing his lights!)
I wonder if he spends all of November painting light strands which is why he has no additional effort for November.
If someone sol es the light issue would November then have to change? 😂
In Sweden, all lighting around Christmas is either actual candles or made to imitate candles. I didn't realize how deeply this matters to me until I went to Lithuania for a December choir gig and everything was a cold blue. The entire point of December is to feel that you're fighting Darkness itself armed only with fire and a deeply rooted hope for another spring.
Exactly. The warmness feeling you get from seeing a color that’s reminiscent of fire compared to the cold daylight mimicry that is the harsh blues and greens
Those ghastly all-blue sets of lights were inexplicably popular in the UK a few years ago. They were everywhere. Least-festive Christmas decorations ever!
They seem to have quickly fallen out of fashion but there are still some around.
I remember back in the day we had christmas trees with actual candles in them… And we lived in a house made of wood 🤦♂️ it was just asking to be burned alive but luckily that never happened to us 🥳
That closing sentence is the most Swedish Viking thing I've ever read.
And armed with a few good fire extinguishers for the inevitable ignition of a conifer with open flames all over it.
Hobby mini painter here: you will 100% want to put at least some clear, if not gloss varnish on any acryllic-painted lights. It'll do yeoman's work protecting them from yellowing and weather, and gloss coats can help avoid sun bleaching. A hair dryer should be enough for heat-treating most paints. If you want to get the most out of that airbrush, pick up some acryllic thinner and medium and experiment with different thinner/medium/paint ratios (thinner and medium can also replace water and PVA glue with potentially better, more consistent results compared to your milk glass method, done correctly).
I'd also say trying other paints would be an idea, that set looked more opaque than other transparent paints I've used (SMS and Tamiya both come to mind for clear, consistent coats. And Gaia but getting that outside of Japan is uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh).
Wait, could I do this with lightbulbs, too? I'm kinda assuming probably not because you have to heat it to apply it? I would love to be able to make my own colored lightbulbs.
(I haven't even watched the video yet because I saw this and got excited haha)
It just doesn't feel like Christmas until we watch Alec meticulously handpaint hundreds of Christmas lights. I hope this tradition never dies!
I hope it does, because that’d we finally have this product
I'd want to see Alec actually decorating the house with the lights... I think of Clark Griswold.
Wait til he discovers Easter eggs?
Better than some poor kid in a sweatshop in a third world country...
Given his usual concerns about efficiency, it's really weird that he decided to fix something by making it 98% less efficient. It's rare, but I think he's objectively wrong on this one.
Pointing out the true tone is not a sponsor just made me realize the shocking lack of sponsorship is channel has. I think that's part of why I find them such a joy to watch.
Commercial sponsorship you mean. He has a ton of support on Patreon.
@@pilotcritic True. I guess I mean interruptions to the flow of the content.
I mean, SponsorBlock and SponsorSkip are a thing...
Perhaps, true tone will get the hint with Alec’s not so subtle steer towards a letter writing campaign and will sponsor a video, when they see the copious amounts of fan letters and do it. Alec would do the video in any case, after they make the concept a reality, but should get paid for it. It would be a mutually beneficial relationship and quite practical and effical advertising from the viewer perspective as long as he is permitted to say what he truly believes, which is another reason true tone should bring him onboard early.
Considering those war thunder/spammy mobile games can pay 10-100k for a single spot in a channel of alecs size, you really gotta respect his integrity.
I think this is a really interesting cultural race against time; a lot of people who grew up with only or mostly the incandescent strings will have the same color preferences as Alec, but younger people growing up with the current LED colors will be acquiring an equally strong association with those lights. Whatever demand pressure may currently exist for LEDs that mimic old incandescents, the more time passes without them being available, the more the winds of nostalgia will start pushing the opposite direction.
Everybody's favourite music time period just happens to be the one during their formative years. Today's rap sucks. Today's rock sucks. Today's.....
Or maybe they will associate the incandescent palette with their grandparents and later in life will seek them due to nostalgia? As well perhaps in some short time the technology that we use for standard light bulbs will filter down to Christmas lights and will again became standard.
I think that current issues originates from two factors. Cheap LEDs, that will produce uniform, unnatural light and are rather suited for various effects or as control lights. And that people in different parts of the world have different preferences in colours.
When synthesizer keyboards were new, there was a gradual effort to make them sound like acoustic instruments. But even in an era where most “cheap” keyboards can sound like pianos, and computers can sound like orchestras with Spitfire or Berlin libraries, people are still very much invested in making new bleeps and bloops, as well as imitating the classic units from the 1980s. Gen Z fans of 1980s music admire it as retro, not as the radical music of the future. Anyone who makes music on a laptop could tell you about the cultural impact of the Serum plugin, which makes no effort to provide a means of imitating an orchestra, instead acting like a 1980s synth on steroids… and the FM audio technology responsible for the dubstep sounds of Skrillex is the same technology powering the DX7, responsible for so many clear 1980s sounds.
I’m curious what someone who grew up without electricity would have thought about seeing incandescent bulbs for the first time, given that they can be as intense as shaded daylight, yet lacking in the blues.
This assumes the naive, discredited "blank slate" theory where every single cultural or social preference is imagined to be the result of pure conditioning within a boundless soup of accidental variation.
It isn't. Harsh lights are harsh because they hurt our eyes. Headaches are headaches because they cause pain.
Cultural variation is not infinite. There are many preferences that are the result of physical and biological mechanisms.
Even the joke Alec made in the middle about the association of green and red with Christmas versus pinks and baby blues with Easter being "objectively correct", is not really a joke. There are objective reasons those color associations won't ever be switched: green is the color of evergreen trees, red is the color of all winter berries. Light pinks and baby blues are the color of spring flowers and robin eggs and etc. These aren't accidents of cultural conditioning, they are imposed by external realities.
It is funny to imagine for purposes of speculative fiction, in the way that science fiction writers used to/often still do falsely imagine natural selection can result in infinite bizarre variations (in reality: no, they can't, evolutionary variation is constrained to follow along rigidly strict morphological constraints imposed by universal physical laws), but the world simply doesn't work that way.
Broad populations will not be conditioned to prefer harsh, neuralgia-inducing lights just because that's what they had growing up. Given technology available cheaply, manufacturers will likely produce better-looking colored LED lights the same way they have produced better-looking warm white ones. And they are better looking due to the biological hardware we are born with, not due to blank-slate conditioning.
@jasondashney This has been discredited. People who grew up with hair metal may have some sort of nostalgic association with it, but they do not respond to surveys indicating they actually think hair metal was the best music. It's just another myth that's the result of this false "blank slate" meme that just won't die despite thorough debunking.
I’ve never felt so validated in my entire life. I HATE new Christmas lights and I’m so glad I know why now
Welcome to the party, pal!
Have a slight astigmatism and the blue and purple LEDs get even MORE obnoxious!
I feel the same way. Last year I was sent several strands of LED Christmas Lights to test and review. I would say most had Pastel colors and I just could not stand them. Purple, Pink, Baby Blue I thought these are Easter Lights. I have been waiting for LED's in C9 and C7 to look like the old time VINTAGE INCANDESCENT. Tru-Tone looks great but the price is crazy high. I did get some off Amazon that looked good. Now just slowly replacing my GE Incandescent strings from the 70's that are still going after 40+ years. But like Alec said, when you have several strands of C9 GE Incandescent strands powered up the light bill goes through the roof.
I hate Christmas, leastways bad lights.
@thetowndrunk988 We're sorry to hear about your terrible upbringing.
modern christmas lights drive me INSANE with their coldness, thank you so much for raising awareness about this problem and taking action!!
You honestly have no idea how soothing this channel is to me. The way you care so much about stuff like this validates me so much lmao, I always feel alone otherwise
For us Nerds Venting frivolous frustrations.
It's SO refreshing to know I'm not the only one who's been in search of LED equivalents to the classic incandescent Christmas lights! Tru-Tone really did it. They have a lifetime customer here.
"I've never had a need for an airbrush, I just use a comb" is one of the most wheeze summoning lines I have heard ever; excellent work!
That one got me good.
I didn't get that joke until I read your comment. lol derp
How do you paint with a comb?
@@pawpatrolnewspoorly
That was a good one 😂
Who else looks forward with joy to the annual Christmas lights video? 🙂
Please don't ever stop this tradition!
You just can’t get in the holiday spirit without it.
True tone developed the colored mini lights years ago they just like these videos to much.
I was literally thinking last night about when a new holiday light video would come out! Much more enjoyable than listening to Mariah Carey's "All I want..."
Echoing this. Alec, if you're reading these, these videos have become part of my holiday tradition!
The true beginning of the holiday season.
YES to all of this. I was driving home last night and I saw what was on display and literally asked myself "what the heck?". I remember the blue incandescent lights on our Christmas tree in the 90s and it's absolutely not the same. Glad I'm not the only one!
Do blue Christmas lights kinda hurt when you look at them? I started having this problem and it's only the blue Christmas lights and certain blueish headlights that do it.
@@dahken417 My eyes have trouble with blues too.
Yeah it just kind of looks weird like a gaming PC is exactly what I thought. I mean that’s cool if that’s like what younger people will become nostalgic for. I don’t wanna poo poo stuff others like but I would prefer more warm colors and like my old school stuff 😅 you know like have an option for people like me too. It’s my happy nostalgic warm cozy Christmas time! I’m already in Florida we don’t get snow let me have my cute Christmas lights 😂
@@dahken417I always wondered as a kid why the green and blue lights were so dark, and I wished they were brighter. Turns out, no I don't. The light that those two colours emit is so stark and cold, my festive coloured lights don't stay on for longer than a few minutes a day during Christmas season
I wish I was aware of this sooner! During the first half of the video, I kept thinking "lacquer and a spray gun, lacquer and a spray gun!", and then you got so close! The problem you're having with those paints, especially the red, is that they contain pigment instead of dye. Dye is a lot more expensive, so isn't present in entry level paints, but it's fully transparent.
I can personally recommend Stewart MacDonald's alcohol dyes, as I've been using them for transparent color finishes for 15 years. Pricey, but they last _forever_ . You'd start with a lacquer, thinned 50/50 with acetone. Then for the concentrations you need, you want to pour some of the dye into a wide glass dish and let the alcohol evaporate until dry, so you're not altering the solvent mix of the lacquer too much. Then, mix the dyes in, testing the strength as you go, and removing the lacquer with acetone between tests (If they're plastic "bulbs" you'd want to test them first, or test with a glass bulb instead, as acetone could attack the plastic).
Once you have the concentration right, spray away! The tinted lacquer will be perfectly transparent at any reasonable concentration. It won't tolerate outdoor usage as well, but it should last a few seasons outdoors until somebody manufactures what you're looking for. Should last a very long time indoors. Over time, the lacquer might crackle a bit, which would honestly be a very nice looking effect.
To hold the bulbs, what comes to mind is the sleeve that holds the cartridges upright in a plastic case of .22 ammo. Not sure if you'd be able to buy just the sleeves or empty cases, but it's worth a look. I probably have a few I'd be happy to ship you.
From a nail tech. There are transparent gel polishes available (aliexpress too) which are both dark in color, and still transparent. I used them many times and they work great. Plus, they can also be diluted with isopropyl alcohol to maoe liquid enough to airbrush on (again used this technique and it works great in nailart). Plus being a uv resin based, the color should be quite durable, the lights could even be dipped in some good no wipe top coat which would make the final product stronger.
Thank you for your reply. I need to paint a clear turn signal bulb into an amber color but I can't figure out how. I hadn't thought about nail gel polishes.
I came to say exactly this! When he showed the impulse- buy airbrush kit that's when it hit me. The possibilities are truly endless! I'm picturing glittery dip powders too but that might be over the top, even for Alec, or completely undesirable to him.
You Vietnamese girls are heroes.
I also was going to suggest uv cured gel polish too. So here's to your suggestion being seen and maybe happening next November!
Do they not heat up at all when being cured?
For the airbrushing solution, if you're looking to dramatically increase the durability and colour-staying power, try an airbrush varnish! When applied properly it doesn't effect the colour (So I assume the light output would go mostly unchanged) and it's what's commonly used for miniature painting to protect models from grubby dirty gamer fingers. As an added bonus, it can be applied after drying, each colour, so it doesn't add much to your current process.
There are probably ones available with UV blockers in them to reduce the sun damage.
@@grimpaththere ABSOLUTELY are, especially if you look at model kit oriented topcoats
I've just been using Pledge Future floor polish for my topcoat, but they apparently discontinued that formula and it's hard to find a good replacement. (luckily I have a lot and it goes a long way)
I came to the comments to say this also lol.
@@entropy11I know they used to use silicones that made it difficult to get a new finish to stick, even years after it was used.
Alec, can you please put all the Christmas lights videos into a playlist? The should be together so we can easily watch all of them as a holiday tradition. 😊
oh, this would be fun. Yes, please!
Hard agree
Much needed
we need this
... Just make it your self ... 😂
Hey Alec!
We fixed your problem, our VintaGlo line of Christmas lights are what you are looking for... And our Yule Multi Mix is your preferred 4-color Multi :)
Nice! Just bought two sets, I'll report back here with how they look!
YES someone finally did it!
@@lucase6407 Holding you to it! :)
@@jacobsousou8857 it was about time someone saved the nail polish and spray paint.
I got some and mentioned the video and they included a third one with a note! Seems like a very nice company :)
I love that this man found his niche. And an audience. I really like the breaking down of highly technical things I've never really known how they worked. Idk. It's brings a warmth that the audience is broad enough and kind enough that this channel can exist
I really feel the same way
Glad you said it out loud
If you want to give this a shot again, certain hobby paint manufacturers make clear paints specifically meant to be used for clear plastic. Tamiya makes some acrylic based paints that work really well with an airbrush. I would give one of those a shot. The paints you use look opaque before applied; the paints I'm thinking about look clear even coming out of the bottle.
I think that's just the problem. Alec has learned to use opaque paints because anything that starts off looking transparent just isn't dark enough of a pigment to achieve the color and brightness that he's looking for.
@@AlextheHistorian the paints I'm referring to aren't all that bright when applied correctly. They're used frequently to make white LEDs look red/green/ whatever color you want the light to actually be. And now that he has an airbrush, he can do multiple light coats to achieve that darker transparent effect he's going for.
I've had good luck with the Tamiya clear blue, orange, and red spray paints on plastics
Do you do wargame miniatures or other models?
I found a light up Santa on the curb whose paint is fading. It’s definitely translucent paint.
I was thinking about this last night. Thank you for sharing brands.
Several years ago, people began replacing the incandescent bulbs in their pinball machines with LEDs (there are generally about 100 individual bulbs in a pinball machine). This had many advantages -- they last longer, they generate less heat to warp plastics, they put less stress on ancient board components because they consume less power, and they emit less EV radiation (helping preserve the art on the playfield). BUT LEDs are also very harsh. It's not just that they're bright, it's that they transition from off to on instantly (well, nearly so, and many, many times faster than an incandescent bulb does). On a pinball machine, where the lights are constantly blinking, this harsh binary transition from off to on is very hard on the eyes. (there are also other technical issues with old pinball machine lamp matrices that cause LEDs to erroneously light up at times, due to the presence of tiny amounts of current that the original incandescent bulbs didn't react to -- this is called "ghosting" in pinball circles). Also, since AC power in the US operates at 60hz, the LEDs are actually blinking on and off 60 times per second. Incandescent bulbs didn't have enough time to cool down between those 60-times-per-second pulses, but with LEDs, this creates an almost subliminal flickering effect that gives some people headaches, and results in a generally harsh perception even if you don't consciously register why.
To solve this, my friend Harold created a brilliant boardset called "LED OCD" and "GI OCD" which caught on like wildfire in the pinball community. Maybe you could create or posit something similar for Christmas lights.
The LED OCD board makes LEDs look softer and fade smoothly like incandescents. It sits between the driver board and the controlled LEDs (generally the ones under the inserts on the playfield), and it does a few things -- first it re-drives the controlled LEDs at 250hz instead of 60hz, so that they don't flicker (LEDs don't have time to cool down in one 250th of a second). This also allows it to control transition states smoothly. It modifies the duty cycle of each light at a specific user-specified brightness and fade profile for absolute smoothness.
The GI OCD board is for the General Illumination of the pinball machines (strings of lights that just generally light up the game). This one works by converting the power from AC to DC and using pulse width modulation to smoothly control the brightness of the LEDs.
It can't make the bulbs themselves more diffusive, obviously, but that is a problem manufacturers could easily solve with decent quality frosted bulb covers (pinball LED manufacturers sell a multitude of varieties that work great).
You can find more info about these boards by googling their name. CometPinball can no doubt put you in contact with Harold, their creator, if you want to learn more as well.
God tier comment
What a knowledge dump! 🤘
You taught me so much in TH-cam comment. I wish I could bump your post up for visibility more than a simple like.
The blinking LEDs in a pinball machine would drive me crazy at 60Hz or 120Hz. 250Hz wouldn’t cut it either since your eyes are following the ball bouncing around the board. You’d see dots all over your field of view. I’ve been complaining about automotive tail lights (and sometimes brake lights, marker light, or daytime driving lights) that use PWM at low frequencies (roughly 60-500). I believe there should be laws changed to put a minimum of 1000Hz on those lights. Because of rapid eye movement, the pinball lights would also be best above 1000Hz too. I’ve seen very few automotive lights with PWM that fast, but they do exist.
So, another helpful approach is to add a capacitor in parallel with the LED to smooth the instant on/off to give it more of a warm-up/cool-down effect which LEDs don’t have. You’d have to go way, WAY higher frequency before LED would have any fade-up/down time. Remember, LEDs are semiconductors just like the microchips that are controlling them which can operate at kHz, MHz, GHz! Also note that a very simple device like a typical IR remote control has its LED turning on and off around 38,000 times per second for the carrier frequency and then the data that’s modulated on that carrier is much slower. For common situations, LEDs simply don’t fade on/off. The capacitors would help.
Many LED bulbs take a bit of to time to turn off, but its actually the power supplies powering the LEDs that take a while to turn off, due to power supplies having a tiny bit of energy storage that isnt drained instantly.
Incadecent bulbs have a tiny bit of energy storage of their own, in the form of thermal energy in the hot filiment, which is what makes incadecent bulbs take a bit of time to turn off. LEDs on their own do not have energy storage, and so can turn off extremely quickly.
P. S. LED bulbs with failing power supplies do sometimes like to demonstrate rapid flickering, so there is that.
I've never had a need for an air brush.... I use a comb.
I laughed for well over a minute at this. These little gems of humor thrown in are one of the reasons I love watching your videos. Keep it up!
I was trying to imagine paint dipped combs used to paint small Christmas lights before I realized that I am an idiot and that was hilarious.
the joke didnt hit me until like 5 seconds later.. i had to pause the video and said "wait..." 😂
Alec oozes personality and has such a refreshingly honest and relatable voice. He can make a 20 minute video on lights and dishwashers entertaining as well as educational.
Plus he's absolutely gorgeous, those cheek dimples make me all gooey 🥵
@@satyris410ayo 🤨
Huh…. Yeah, I guess that was 20 minutes! It felt like 5.
He can even make a one hour video on a fridge interesting!
I'm on the total opposite end of this. I find the topics really interesting and appreciate the deep dives and quality editing, but his voice and delivery are terribly grating.
PLEASE DON'T GIVE UP!! It's refreshing to see I'm not alone in wanting LED Christmas lights that look like traditional incandescents. I gave up trying to find a solution for LEDs. I still use my incandescents because they just look so much better. I have been considering investing in a set of Twinkly Strings, but I can't stand those retina searing LEDs on my Christmas Tree.If Tru Tone would make them, I will definitely buy a set or 30.
I will never put electric light on my christmas tree. Allways real candels
The best part of all of this is that in 30 years people will be all nostalgic about their pure wavelength super bright LED lights that they can't find anymore, and these dull soft-colored ones just don't feel like xmas at all.
T5 Silicone Light Bulb Lamp Colored Caps Covers Boot - you can put these on the warm white LEDS :)
Theese were in my Suzuki Swift Dashboard :) I replaced the lights with LED-s, these fitted nicely on the led-s also
I agree. However... You would LOVE Tru-Tone lights. White light with colored bulb, just like incandescent. They are truly just as good. And I can drive 5 strings (125 lights) together for less than 75 watts!
@@LiftPizzasnobody is gonna miss these bright LEDs when they are gone trust me they are the bane of eyeballs existence
Please never stop this kind of videos, I swear watching you painting lights just gives me hope in this cold and cruel world
"Those are Easter colors" has to be a top 5 quote.
Thank you for explaining something I had no words for. Something just BUGGED me about the colored LED strands I see around my neighborhood, but I couldn’t explain WHY until this video. Thanks so much!
Rosco Colorine is what you want! Used in theatrical lighting design, it’s literally what you’re trying to recreate - a paint designed to dip lamps in to colour them. The only issue would be getting hold of it, I think it’s discontinued, but a theatrical or scenic chandler/supplier might have some in stock still. I’d recommend some to you, but I’m in the UK, I wouldn’t know who to suggest in the USA
The biggest challenge with trying to make authentic looking multi-colored LED bulbs is that everyone forgets that the colors used to pigment the glass of the incandescent ones aren't pure colors either. The blue is practically indigo, the green is a forest green, and the red has hints of fuchsia. All because they're trying to counteract the yellowish hue of the bulb filament within. It only kinda-sorta works, which is why you get such an interesting spectra of light from such bulbs.
I love how unhinged this gets. Your science videos and light explainers are what brought me in, but I also really appreciate how you work to capture the aesthetics of yesteryear with the advantages of modern technology. It feels really grounded and reasonable until you see the lengths you are willing to go through to accomplish this goal, like a paladin with a really obscure oath. Thank you so much for your content.
Edit: I also really hate the way the LED blue almost makes things feel darker.
Blue LED's make things darker by temporarily desensitizing your night vision.
@@davidg4288 I have never heard that before, but it makes sense. I've always disliked LEDs because I thought the LED lights didn't illuminate the area around them well enough, but from what you're saying the real reason is that they're too intense and the contrast makes the surrounding area appear darker. Thanks for the insight.
@@whistlingsage9817I think what they're actually saying is that blue light (especially the pure blue light from an LED) makes your brain think it's daytime, so your eyes try to adjust for sunlight despite the fact that it's actually still night.
@@nikkiofthevalley That's an interesting idea. I guess I can only say with certainty that LED Christmas lights look cold and un-illuminating to me, and for some reason I prefer the light from incandescent bulbs.
@@whistlingsage9817 Also some LEDs have a poor color rendition index (CRI), it's not a continuous spectrum. If the object you're trying to see doesn't reflect that particular spectrum it will be dark. Like trying to find a red or green or yellow object using a blue LED flashlight. An LED or CFL may look white but isn't. Check the CRI if you want to use the LED for general illumination. Obviously this doesn't apply to holiday decorations.
I think Technology Connections may have a video on this.
YES. THANK YOU.
I can't stand how all the colours are shifted so far over to the cool side of the spectrum.
It is SO nice to see another human being who feels the same way about these terrible lights.
The "warm" colours look SO entirely wrong, and the "cool" colours are unbearable eye stabbers.
Then, on top of that, I can often see their flicker. The flicker is always either super blatant to me, or hangs out just at the edge- where I can't quite "see" it per se, but I can still notice its presence.
Which is also maddening.
My boyfriend shakes his head at me, whenever I go off about these things- but I go off on those tangents because we have the technology to fix it! This doesn't have to be an issue. It is TOTALLY rectifiable, yet almost nobody is bothering to do it. Gah!
The “storefront with a chasing LED sign letting you know they have CBD oil” dig might be the truest thing you’ve ever said 😅 The shameful, lazy ways LEDs get used drives me insane, you make me feel just slightly less neurotic and I thank you for it.
I don't know who decided that stores needed 14 bajillion lumens of LEDs framing their front windows, but I don't like it.
How's about the headlight brightness ones that circle beer fridges at stores?
Back when LED signs were finally made cheap & available enough, many stores didn't know how to program the message, so the signs often displayed the stock demo message out of the box. 😄
Before, it was vape shops.
Then before that, cheap prepaid smartphone shops.
LOL
_edit:_ and before that? Title loans shops!
Why is this also true in Germany and not only these shops but also shoddy kebap places?
You perfectly explained something I subconsciously noticed for years but never put my finger on, that modern coloured lights just don't have that same warm Christmasy feeling as they used to
it is not only about christmas, but about all light in general. For examples cities now look completely different from plane window than 30 years ago.
The greens and blues are the problem. The reds are fine.
It’s the dull warmness we get when we see colors that are related to fire
I've been ranting about LED Christmas lights to everyone I know, and I'm pretty sure they all think I'm crazy. Just happy to know that another person out there in the world is also bothered by them!!
Same! I hate the blue ones most of all, and cannot understand why they're so popular. I felt so vindicated by the scientific explanation at the start of this video.
A man after my own heart! I'm in the UK, so I grew up with cosy strands of incandescent lights that came in six colours: red, yellow, blue, green, orange and pink. It's likely that the Noma lights you mention at the end of the video come in this combination, so I wouldn't worry that it'll be all pastel and Easter-looking, because traditionally the oranges and pinks in UK-style Christmas lights would be just as bright as the other colours and I expect that's the look Noma is trying to replicate.
I actually had no idea that you wouldn't normally have had those in old incandescent sets in America, but I have wondered over the past couple of decades (god, that dates me) why the new-style LED light sets always stuck so rigidly to four colours. I feel like they look too harsh, especially the blue - I bought a set last year that had equal numbers of all four colours, yet red was much less apparent on the finished tree and the blues and greens stood out intensely. For what it's worth, I find "warm white" LEDs a lot more tolerable, and oddly purple strands can look a lot calmer than blue (though you never seem to see purple in the multicolour strands, you can sometimes find it on its own), so I often use them inside Christmas village buildings.
When I was little (I'm old now) I used to help my mother put round, white, "fabric" covers over the incandescent Christmas tree lights. It made the lights look like they were glowing under snow. It was a very pretty affect. I didn't know, until much until later, they were actually made of asbestos (so they didn't catch on fire from the heat of the bulbs). The things we do for holiday decorations!
I am so glad there's someone else out there who feels the same way I do about fairy lights and will go to the same lengths that I would to get modern LED lights to look like the lights of my childhood.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one bothered all the way through my bones and down into my soul about the awful LED-laser christmas lights
I could tolerate the harshness, but I swear half of the things are half-wave rectified and thus strobe like crazy.
You nailed this 1000%
I have been saying this for years, modern LED christmas lights look nothing like classic christmas lights, some of them look more like Halloween colors instead.
What makes true classic vintage christmas colors are the light pastel pink, pastel red, pastel blue, pastel green, pastel yellow.
Even better when they come with multiple pattern changing colors and the vintage music christmas player.
I‘m actually amazed, we here in germany have „Lampenlack“ a lacquer especially made for incandescent lightbulbs… so if I‘d were to try I‘d just buy Lampenlack and dip the LED. Oh and yes it is available in green, blue, red and yellow as well as a few other colors. (Orange for example 😉)
German really is the ultimate language for compound words. Do that in English, and you get "Lamplaq". Eew. Looks like an esoteric brand of whitening toothpaste--all wrong. In German, you just smash words together and it works, apparently. "Weltschmerz". Works. English: "Worldpain". Nope. "World-weary" works, but only because of hyphen.
That should be the topic of next year's video!
since I shouldn't link anything.. it's easiest to search for "EAN: 4016138187908" that should yield a few results for a set of six colors "bulp dipping paint" .. and conrad (a german retailer that should be one of the results) ships worldwide and yes you can also buy individual colors of course...
...odd.. fairly certain I already mentioned that... aaanyways again [just in case] the searchterm would be "Clou TLK20" I used said red on my car for decades.. worked flawlessly
These videos have become a Christmas tradition at this point. I'm not sure if I hope that some manufacturer creates something to satiate Alec or that nothing ever materializes and Alec just has to keep trying different techniques to keep the videos coming. I am glad to see that the airbrush method looks to be the most promising so far.
I'd like to think he would still complain if for no other reason to uphold the festive tradition we know and love.
The Noma lights featured near the end of the video seem like at least one manufacturer is on the right track due to the bulb caps being replaceable. Looks like they're only available in the UK though?
If I had legal access to Alec's property (or work cubicle if he had one) I'd definitely be pranking him with a huge eye-watering blue LED display! Possibly on Halloween or April Fools. Fortunately I will never have such access.
"Gamer vomit" is a perfect descriptor.
This year I caught up on several years' worth of these LED Christmas lights videos, and I never realized exactly WHY I disliked the modern ones, but I realized that I find myself sensitive to blue light even in my own house with an RGB bulb. It is the pure blue light that I realize hurts my eyes. And yeah when driving around the other night, I noticed how BLUE all the lights in people's yards were. It's so overpowering!
The length you had to go to get this project done is giving me a much needed confirmation I am not alone in my weirdness. Even better is the fact that this video has over 900 k views. That's quite comforting, to be honest.
Got my hands on some Tru-Tone this year because they werent instantly sold out. Deeply impressed and bought way in, Even have some 40-year old strands and put them side-by-side for comparison and damn, they are spot on in terms of color tone and lumens output. Can almost not tell new from old.
I also got a set. Ordered a box of red, green, and white classic color bulbs. As well as the red and green wires. They look amazing.
Nice warm tones. Really stands out against the other houses and their LEDs.
As a miniature painter who uses paints through an airbrush, and also a Christmas light fan, I strongly support this endeavor! I suggest spraying a clear varnish on the lights to greatly improve durability.
I was going to suggest the same thing, but I believe Createx paints are polyurethane. EDIT: Nevermind, I was thinking of one of the additive formulas that you can mix with their paints. These are water based acrylics when used alone, so a clear coat would be good for protection.
Definitely suggesting this too, spray-on clearcoats can be hyperdurable.
Random thought for the painting jig, if you ever get around to the larger scale painting: instead of a single jig to hold the ones you're painting, try making a jig to hold the whole strand, plus a stencil to cover ¾ of the bulbs, so you can just move the stencil down one bulb distance each time you want to switch colors.
If you make the holes in a zig zag line 4 bulbs wide, you'll have 4 rows of bulbs at even intervals. Then you can just cover them by rows.
Exactly what I was thinking!
Or use 4 sides of a box. One side for each color and turn it for each color pass..?
@@dwren365that was my thought, just take an extra wide section of cardboard, make a few bends and tape it together, and paint one side at a time
@@dwren365 Using sides of a box wouldn't work too well, I think, since the goal is to have four colors in a pattern (rgbyrgbyrgby...) rather than in a row (rrr...ggg...bbb...yyy...) with each bulb only a few inches apart. You'd need a very long, very thin box to pull that off, and it'd probably be a pain to set up even then.
Yes!!! I agree! Warm white LED strings with a coloured glass/cap would be wonderful, and yes, pinks and purples do not belong on Christmas palettes.
Could not possibly agree more. We bought our very first set of LED lights for the tree last year. My initial joy at the prospect of finally having a long lasting set that wouldn't drive me crazy was short lived as they lit up the living room like the Vegas strip.
Just put in a few slot machines, pay off the cops, and pay off the mortgage... 😉
“I’ve never had a need for an airbrush, usually I use a comb” is the exact reason why I love Technology Connections and am subscribed 😂
Try UV-curable resin. It's pretty thick, so it sticks well, and you can easily do multiple coatings. And the best of all, just shine a UV light on it and it's ready within seconds. I'm using it myself with fluorescent dyes to create vibrant red and orange colors from blues.
how did you comment 1 day ago when the video was posted 25 minutes ago?
@@greystripe3737their Lilley a patron
@@greystripe3737 Patreon members get early access
@@greystripe3737how do people not know how early access patreon rewards work by now?
@@greystripe3737 Patreon viewers get to watch the videos early
Ah, I remember when LED holiday lights started to emerge and I remember being repulsed by their overly blue profile. The blues and greens dominated, and like you, warmth is a great importance.
True Tone are great lamps! Need to invest in some, when I buy holiday lights next.
Great video, as always.
My biggest annoyance with the blue-shift in Christmas lights is that they look "cold". I just really like the warmth of traditional bulbs. They look cozy during a cold time of year.
I was discussing just this with my friend the other day. I'm fortunate to have relatively cheap electricity here in the PNW and have around 1.5kW of vintage C9 and C7 lights on my house and a tree out front. My house really stands out on my street because it looks so warm and festive while the houses around it with LED Christmas lights look cold and dreary and most of them flicker too. I was an early adopter of LED lighting and had switched my house almost entirely by around 2011 despite the high cost at the time but after trying LED Christmas lights briefly I went back to incandescent.
I don’t know if it’s a Canadian tire exclusive brand or not but Noma up here in Canada makes some decent led Christmas lights. They have a pattern of red, yellow, orange then blue then it goes red,orange,yellow and green and so on. So you have half the green and blues of most sets but you get a nice warm glow illuminating the area.
I do theatrical lighting, and if I had a light that was too bright and too blue, I would use an orange color correction (also known as CTO) and a neutral density (gray) gel. If you put those together, you get a brown gel, that pushes the color warmer and cutting down the brightness. Now, I know that modern day gel is plastic sheets, so maybe going back to the paint or nail polish in a translucent brown may help knock things down to what you're looking for!
That’s very smart!!
Brown? Yes - brown is orange with context. Or is it the other way round?
Lighting design student here,
I was wondering if gels and some tape would work, or LEDs with better color mixing to get better approximations.
I've personally been investigating twinkly brand lights to see if better color mixing can be achieved with them. We'll see when they arrive in a few days
I've wondered, to tone-down the "laser blue," is to try dabbibg some of that yellow transparent paint over them. That might make them "less blue" and less bright (without making them too greenish). Or it'll totally backfire and make the yellow fluoresce too much. I dunno. 🤪 LOL
If someone manufacturers and sells what Alec wants (small Christmas light strands with warm white LED bulbs underneath warm-tone green, red, yellow, and blue covers), I can guarantee I will be a loyal customer. I hate laser-blue lights on people's houses during Christmastime. They make my eye sockets literally burn.
Bring it up in September then
When you find something, let me know, I need good lights.
I have exactly what he's wanting and I got them at Walmart 😂😂😂
Apparently they pretty much already do, he showed some images of some Noma lights and their box near the end of the video. He noted that these were sent from a UK viewer though I think? I'd have to rewatch that bit and check.
@@SlartiMarvinbartfast True, but I'd have to buy an adapter to use in the US.
THANK YOU! It feels so validating to find someone who cares about this like I do! It’s a problem and it needs solving! I am also enough of a maniac to get out the airbrush for this task. Appreciate your efforts.
Just a heads up: If you decide (or need to) try resin again, get some UV resin instead of epoxy resin. You can set it in about a minute with a black light and could theoretically build up a few coats of it pretty quickly to get the right level of dye you'd need for a solid dark blue. I don't think it tends to be all that runny either. A source of quality UV resin I keep coming across is Sophie and Toffee, though I haven't tried it out myself yet. One hobby at a time!
To add to this, he mentioned the resin being too ‘runny’. A lot of people in the 3D printing scene who use UV resin to smooth out FDM prints mix the resin with Corn Starch to thicken it, which makes it easier to apply and spread. Might be worth trying.
Just remember to wear gloves and use a mask/good ventilation. People in hobby crafts and 3D printing seem to underestimate it because they're not afraid of it sticking to their skin like regular 2 part resin, but it's pretty nasty stuff when uncured (see the safety data sheets).
Gel nails are technically just UV resin. Given how well the nail polish appears to have worked, this checks out
I was thinking the exact same, Nearly instant curing may help!
I wonder if the heat from the curing process would melt the plastic caps
I can’t believe how specifically identical out tastes in Christmas lights are. I’ve been trying to explain it to people for years, but couldn’t word it right. I thought I was the only one on an obsessive hunt for those exact colours.
I feel like this entire video was made just for me. The past two weeks I’ve been looking for not only those warm traditional 4 colour string lights in LED, but 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 for a transparent coloured paint that comes in many colours to paint a few cylindrical lamp shades that are made up of a wall of 280 little plastic “crystals” that I wanted to paint in the colours and shapes of tetrominoes fitting together, so that the light would shine through and come out coloured on the walls.
Perfect timing, perfect video, perfect information, perfect links, perfect taste in Christmas lights.
Never change Alec, never change.
Man i can feel the need for the incandescent coloured ones. I actually like the amber ones because they remind me of sodium vapor and i kind of like the magenta because it is a unique colour not very used either way. The deep blue tough is unreplacable. And although i did not grow in the era where incandescent fairy lights were used, i still like them over LEDs. Maybe using chemistry i may find a cure to the deep blue for LEDs.
@@photonik-luminescence Do come back and let me know if you succeed, if you remember. Good luck!
@@photonik-luminescence I subbed btw, your channels interesting. Mines is just stupid videos of my friends.
@@MalloryKnox. Thank you so much. Yeah, i like light bulbs simply because they are fascinating. And since my main interest is chemistry (and astro) i may combine it to make some true deep blue
@@MalloryKnox. Oh well, i actually am testing if i can youse a compund know as "prussian blue". It's a really beautiful deep blue dye chemical and i tested it in nail polish. So far result look disappointing but multi layering may do it. But i won't give up. Mostly it will be on a bucket list to try and when a idea strikes me i do it. I will make sure to share the recepie and tell you
I just love this man"s obsession with something so trivial that it's not even noticeable to me. Please never change
Alec, you and Tru-Tone are both obsessed with making Christmas lights look better and I love it. I would buy Tru-Tone mini light sets! My old incandescent mini sets are getting harder to maintain every year, but they look so much better than any LED sets currently for sale.
i need to know how we can get Alec elected to public office/policymaker. every point he makes is not only well-researched and logical, but also happens to make the most sense. i can't go on road trips now without getting annoyed at car makers in 2023 that are still using a red brake light as the turn signal. so many of your videos are so founded in reason, i would just love for the world to be more like this. that includes easier-on-the-eyes LED xmas lights ;)
Alec for President?
"i can't go on road trips now without getting annoyed at car makers in 2023 that are still using a red brake light as the turn signal" -- I can totally relate. I think about his video on that topic every single day as I drive to and from work. And on weekends when I'm out.
I'm afraid he would get burned out immediately, unless his responsibility is narrow enough.
I appreciate that someone is out there trying to bring back the true glow of Christmas lights. I hope this catches on and that some company figures out how to make them so we can purchase them at Walmart someday. Until then, I will keep trying to salvage my incandescent string-a-long light sets.
If you decide to make the airbrushed lights a regular thing, you might enjoy learning more about paint chemistry, both for the fun of it and for better results. Every pigment has different properties, not just for transparency and intensity, but also lightfastness. Reds are especially notorious for being difficult to apply, and for fading in sunlight, but if you know your requirements, you can choose the best pigments for your application. Easiest way to know what you're getting is to switch from craft airbrush paints to an artist brand like Golden High Flow Acrylics, which will list their exact pigment content on the bottle, and the full paint properties on their website.
Yes, red is the entitled princess of color. Coming from someone who has used color in pretty much every form on many substrates.
@@90w30n yellows have a pretty bad rep among hobby painters too
All craft airbrush paints are criminally expensive. You get, what, three thimbles-full for $10+ dollars? And when you take into account that during airbrushing, a significant portion of the paint ends up as overspray, the cost doubles/triples/quadruples.
I stick with cheap-azz tubes of acrylic from a dollar store and thin them down with homemade thinner. They work perfectly well for my needs (painting 3D-printed, functional parts...not gaming miniatures).
I used different color Sharpies on a short 3000K led strain. The results are AMAZING! Felt like rediscovering a shard of childhood. The colors are so beautiful!
Just wanted to pop in to say that I can relate to the level of holiday light insanity here and fully embrace it! My lighting theme for years now has been alternating red and white bulbs for a peppermint/candy cane theme, but the options for this were just not there when I started. My first go round (with incandescents) was buying half solid white strands and half red strands, then painstakingly swapping every other bulb, nearly destroying my fingers in the process. When those strands eventually failed and I was on the hunt for an LED replacement, I ended up using the nail polish solution myself and painting every other bulb of my white LED strands with red polish. It's been at least 2 years, maybe 3, since I did that, and the red is still going strong despite the cold snowy weather where I live! I will say, though, the exterior lights have all been north-facing, so they don't get harsh southern sun. If your airbrush solution doesn't stand up, definitely try nail polish again and do a durability test! 🙂
Wow. Thanks for the information! Super helpful!
They sell candy cane lights here in Canada, have for years (past 15 years?). So if you can't find them where you live, try Canadian Tire haha. I started it because of my hate for the blue/green LEDs. But also wrapping my apartment balcony in candy cane ribbon gave it a pretty day time look too.
@@newtunesforoldlogos4817I hate how obvious that is (maybe not for every scenario but). How dare you!
@@newtunesforoldlogos4817 This might work in some applications if you didn't mind spending extra buying twice as many lights, though for my specific use case (icicle lights), trying something like this would be a tangled mess lol. I could see it being an option for lining a straight strand on a solid surface-perhaps less so for trimming trees and bushes. But again, twice as expensive (the nail polish only cost me about $4 plus time) and maybe finicky to hang. Still, an option!
@@a_trauma_llama2991 How does Canada have all the best stuff? Poutine, and now this?! 😆 Joking aside, I have seen candy cane lights in the states becoming a bit more common, but not in icicles, and usually not LED. Maybe they've expanded the offerings since I went rogue with the nail polish, I just haven't had to look in the past few years since the nail polish has held up surprisingly well.
I've been so passionate about this for years. The blue especially hurts my eyes. Everyone else thought I was crazy, but starting last year I started doing your sharpie on the smooth white LED bulbs trick and its PERFECT, even though I have to reapply the colour every year.
I never thought about it and why I had an aversion to the multi-colored LED strings as of late until I joined Alec on his annual descent into Christmas light madness, and now I see why I've shifted towards "warm" white/non-blue white lights.
Warm white is the way for everything.
Warm white lighting makes my eyes hurt. Incan 2700K is bad enough I can't tell what color things are, and I end up rubbing my eyes constantly and having to take breaks. The sweet spot for lighting is a true neutral of around 4000K to 5000K with roughly -0.005 to -0.015 duv (i.e. slightly pink tint instead of the usual green). And it's not just me. Standards agencies have been considering an update to the definition of ANSI standard white, to require negative duv in LED lights in order to qualify for certification.
@@ToyKeeper I agree. I can't stand the warm lighting that people like and prefer to use daylight bulbs all the time. Around 4000K. If I'm at home and need mood lighting I'd rather dim them than change the color temp.
It's fine on Christmas trees as that's not task lighting at all. I've not managed to make the switch to LEDS in Christmas lighting at all yet, but have contemplated LEDs that I could color cycle.
Agreed. Even as a kid I preferred white Christmas lights vs multicolored even though sometimes they were admittedly fun. But when driving past decorated houses, the displays with mostly-white were almost always my favorite. It is very hard to impress me with multicolor displays. They'd have to be done just right or only used sparingly as "trim" or "pop" amongst mostly white. And the only time I like blue-white light is for maybe icicles but, again, minimally.
For general home lighting, blue / daylight looks harsh and corporate. Warm light is cozy and intimate. It also shows fewer imperfections on your walls, furniture, carpet, etc. for the slightly less tidy. 😂 Blue light is only good for museum-status homes.
@@ToyKeeper Huge respect to you for your flashlight firmware. Negative duv is the way to go. Beyond that, we all have our preferences. Unless I'm carrying a thrower, I don't carry anything cooler than 3500K during the day and 2700K at night. I love the warmth. Maybe it's because I grew up with incandescent bulbs and half-dead incan flashlights. The human eye has a way of adjusting to color temperature. I would like for some minimum CRI to be part of the ANSI standard if it isn't already.
You are 100% on point with this. I can't stand the LED look, can't live with the incandescent energy waste.
As a person who is extremelty particular about lighting design, I thoroughly appreciate every one of your lighting videos. There aren't any other videos or channels doing these videos quite like them that I have found.
Also, white LEDs with coloured coatings (red, amber, pink, blue, green) were being sold in one of the UK's biggest department stores (John Lewis) this year! They looked great and very true to the older look!
That's interesting. I've just looked at the John Lewis web site and can't see any like that. Are they not available online? Or do you have an exact name for the lights please?
I was just there today and didn’t see them! :(
@@SlartiMarvinbartfast The 40 bulb LED retro, it looks like. Remember to switch to Multi, as they default to warm white.
Alec wouldn't agree on the colors, though.
>The coloured lights are not your standard neon blue, green, red and orange but instead are white bulbs in coloured casings (red, orange, green, blue and pink)[...].
As someone who just recently learned about having a mild degree of colorblindness (I flunked the Ishihara color test at work, which came as quite the shock), I couldn't tell you the difference among yellow, amber, or orange Christmas lights. I appreciate the pinks, purples, and teals because at least I can see those. I do love watching these videos on all the clever and outside-the-box solutions our host tries, regardless.
I feel I am obligated to tell you that you aren't missing much! 😂
Purple, indigo, blue, etc. are where it's at.
Amber and orange can be good, but are pretty lackluster by themselves. Red is unremarkable. Green needs blues.
That must be a bizarre and somewhat disconcerting experience to find out that, oh, hey, there are all these colors that I can't discern and everyone else is doing it all the time. I assume traffic lights presented no difficulty because you know the position of the lights?
Haha, it must seem crazy to you seeing people obsess the differences between two light colours that look exactly the same. One of them if warm and friendly okay?!
Your sense of humor, your obsession and your willingness to investigate and solve these pain points, absolutely love it. Where can I find a friend in my life like you?
You might find that some of the more expensive model paints for miniature painting might give you results closer to what you're looking for. Citadel Contrast paint or Army Painter Speedpaint are very heavily pigmented but are designed to be semi-transparent to show through and display the shading underneath. Army Painter Speedpaint has better self-leveling, so you'll probably get the best result from that.
I second this. Those paints are super rich in pigment by design. And some companies (e.g.: Scale 75) create paints which are pretty close to an ink, that would probably work beautifully here. They'll richly stain the bulb even if the gravity pulls some of the paint down.
I want that sweater
I NEED that sweater
I DESERVE that sweater
I was thinking the same thing.
You can't take the man's sweater!
I REQUIRE that sweater
I genuinely want to him to find lights that he's happy with, but at the same time, I look forward to the holiday light video every year. If they ever solve this problem, I still hope he finds a reason to talk about his obsession with holiday lights.
Agreed. Much more enjoy the soft glow colors of incandescent over obnoxious LED. And don't get me started with inflatables.
I've used transparent paints a lot over the years in miniature painting, and you're exactly right that red paints tend to significantly more opaque than other colours. I'm not an expert by any means, but my understanding is it's an issue both with the pigments themselves and with how red behaves when it loses intensity (i.e. becomes very very pink rather than red). In order to get the colour saturation actually reading as red, the paints need to be a lot more pigment heavy than other transparent colours.
If you ever do do this again (and I hope with you that you won't need to) I'd recommend checking out some comparisons between different paint manufacturers and how their products actually behave before buying the paint, there is an enormous amount of difference in the quality, transparency and actual colours between different manufacturers, miniature painters are pretty much always looking for the next great set of paints, and there are plenty of videos and articles out there clearly showing how each and every product performs in nearly every circumstance.
it's definitively a pigment issue. The bright red-orange pigments are mostly opaque or at best semi transparent, whereas there are very transparent magenta red-rose pigments as well as yellow ones. Probably there are red-orange transparent pigments but they aren't as UV durable so paint manufacturers avoid them.
That's why in fine art painting we usually mix the magenta and yellow that are quite close to primary colors to get the right hue with transparent pigments. Just like Alec did in the video to recreate its orangeish-yellow hue but with different proportions.
Pinball machines can have different color lights, and the LED replacements are often just white LED bulbs with a colored silicone cover that you slip over top of it. I don't know if it would be possible to find those covers that fit on any type of Christmas light, but it may be worth looking into.
They used the same thing in automotive instrument panels.
I’m a little surprised Alec doesn’t complain about my peeve with LED Christmas lights: the 60 Hz flickering. Glad to see built-in rectifiers are more common now.
He has in his previous Christmas light painting episodes. Full bridge rectified lights are becoming more common thankfully. I can see the flickering of cheap sets, and it gives me a headache.
You could also resin print caps for any bulb, all UV resins for 3d printers are translucent, and you can simply add alcohol pigments to clear resin
After dialing in the resin and pigment combo, it’s easy to make a lot of them
Tru-Tone bulbs are indeed amazing, can confirm. I also agree on LED versus incandescent, especially with blue/purple strings that have a painful flicker.
Just want to take a moment to thank you so much for having full captions. It really means a lot to me and my family!
For me, the issue with LED lights isn't the vibrancy of the color (which I like) but rather the total lack of diffusion. They are like tiny flashlights rather than tiny lamps. That, and the fact that many of them use a cheap half-wave rectifier so they are only on half the time and the 30hz blinking is noticeable when you move your eyes
Ohhhh, *that's* why they look so flickery!
Are you saying that they need a FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER?!?
Imagine 25hz in EU
Unlike incandescent bulbs that have relatively large thermal mass to keep almost constant glow, the lack of persistency in LED and the narrow conduction angle will make them pulsing at 60Hz, if there is no full bridge rectification. It won't be 30Hz (or 25Hz in EU) though as the main is 60Hz. Happy holidays
100%W agree with you on this front! I love the benefits of LED lights, but i very much dislike the colors themselves for Christmas, the old school glow of the lights is what always made me very happy.
Hello,
As mentioned in other people’s comments, an artists grade airbrush paint using pigments with high transparency and light fastness might be a good solution. My suggestions for paints would be:
Blue: Golden high flow acrylic, Transparent phthalo blue green shade - you can adjust this with either red or yellow to change the tone of the blue.
Yellow: Golden high flow nickel azo yellow
Green: Golden high flow transparent phthalo green mixed with a small amount of the yellow
Red: (This is more difficult): Golden high flow transparent quinacridone red mixed with a little bit of yellow.
There are other brands such as Schmincke Aero color that might also work. I haven’t use acrylic paints before but both Schmincke and Golden are highly regarded.
You might also want to consider protecting the paint with some kind of clear coat.
Good luck!
I was about to suggest this. You could thin any artists' acrylic paint with airbrush medium, so you aren't stuck with a limited range of colors. Da Vinci's Permanent Red (PR188) is a nice warm semi-transparent red that is lightfast. Or, if you want maximum transparency, their Quinacridone Red (PR209). Also, I have found acrylic paints are not entirely waterproof. They resist water initially but can get cloudy or delaminate if exposed for long to outdoor conditions. I would consider using a topcoat of clear epoxy resin to protect from the elements.
Been thinking exactly this. On a semi-related note, I also feel like you could make an old-style twinkling effect (as per one of his older videos) trivially with a homebrew LED controller.
There is one type of LED Christmas light that I do enjoy, and that's the diffused slow-hue-changing ones. Due to manufacturing differences, each LED changes hue at a slightly different pace, making it a varied display.
Definitely not traditional in any sense, but it's very pleasant-looking.
I also prefer the red, yellow, green, blue color combinations for my Christmas lights and I’m glad someone else is as disappointed in how rare that combination is to find in LED.
However, the past few years, Costco has been selling LED strands manufactured by Sylvania that can switch between warm white and multi-color (with red yellow green and blue). The multi-color actually looks really good and the blue is not as bad as some blues I’ve seen.
I've seen LEDs in that combination, plus my preferred red/orange/green/blue/magenta (hey, don't blame me, it's what I grew up with) and a few others (e.g., red/orange/yellow/green/blue/magenta). They still have all the problems this video highlights with some colors looking way too harsh, and an unfortunate number of them were only available with white strings (which IMO don't look good on a green tree), but I think at this point most of the common color combinations are available in LEDs.
What perplexes me is a set I saw at Target this year that had red, orange, green, blue, magenta...and then a second, ever-so-slightly lighter shade of blue. Blue's already the harshest color on the LED strings, and they went and put twice as many on the string as any other color!
@@slopehoke1277magenta?? Now that's interesting
My family's current Christmas tree also uses color switching LEDs. I think it may have come from Costco as well, but I can't remember. the color switching is super simple but pretty reliable. the strands run on DC and each light bulb has two LEDs in parallel with each the reverse polarity of the other. just reversing the polarity of the DC power going in makes one set of LEDs go out and the other turn on. a little foot switch turns the whole tree on and off, and a little inline controller box switches colors and also enables slow fading in and out or blinking of either color.
The tree is also really quick to set up since all the electrical connections between the sections are made with very large co-axial power connectors inside the central tubes, so just assembling the tree means all the strands are already connected. Gone are the days when we had to try and track down all of the regular AC power plugs inside our previous tree and plug them into the power splitters in the center and having to unplug the whole tree to turn it off. we always had at least one branch that wouldn't light up no matter how many plugs we tracked down. It saves us so much time and frustration to just assemble the tree and it just works.
I'm a miniature painter and regularly use an Airbrush- never thought to give this a try for LED sets. If you do want to make the yellow a little less bright you could try hitting it with a layer of the red - one of the reasons I love airbrushing is that it's great at color blending on the surface you're painting.
Do you mean you are a painter of miniatures, or a person of short stature?
Noma has always been one of the fantastic lighting companies for Christmas. If anyone can do what you're asking, it'd definitely be them. They have or have had some great products that were just different from everyone else
A general tip: use a hairdryer on a mid-heat setting to cure those paints. That shouldn't do anything significant to the plastic caps, and it makes them dry faster. Works for rattlecan paint too.
does this trick with the hairdryer work on model kits as well (like tamiya, revell, that sorta stuff)?
@@SlavSuperstar Yea, it's an old modelmaker trick. Just watch the heat, that's all.
Rattlecan- perfect!
He literally said "I didn't try... and I'm not going to!"
@@SlavSuperstarmodel makers are the ones who came up with it
If you need to do four colors, fold the cardboard into a square tube, with 25 holes on each side. Sort all the lights into each color on the corresponding side, and tape the whole thing together. Cover the sides with shop towels while you spray one side, then repeat for the other side. It occurs to me a 3D printer using a 0.25 nozzle printing transparent PETG in various colors might allow you to simply replace the caps, or with careful measuring, fit a new, slightly larger cap over the original. Actually, I might try this this year.
In my experience with transparent printing, it usually gets foggy. Better would be resin printing as it's far more clear.
@@strategicgnomer1since resin hardens with UV lights, I believe they would become insanely brittle over time.
Or simply just leave the original box as a box 🤷
Another approach for wintertime fairy lights that's overkill of a different variety is to use WS2812 ("NeoPixel") strings. As programmable RGB LEDs, the colours there can be tuned to one's preference, and with a bit more programming some classy effects are possible, such as lights individually and randomly fading in the style of "twinkle" lights (perhaps to come back as a different colour!).
Govee also makes a Christmas lighting version of these. I just put a string on my tree today
RGB+White are even better if you want white-ish or pastel colors. Trying to achieve them by RGB-only feel a bit off.
You can already get them in xmas light form factors. Being addressable they can do double duty for other lighting needs too.
You fight the fight we need, but not one anyone knows about. Keep it up, for me, and later generations
My biggest AuDHD sensory joy is pretty lights, so I became used to have LEDs everywhere rather quickly, however I always look forward to this yearly segment of yours. 💜
I remember,years ago, reading an interview (perhaps it was on ArsTechnica) with a LED manufacturer. Around that time blue LEDs were the newest thing. The interviewer asked jokingly if they could make them less bright because they were getting so bright it was annoying, the manufacturer said that actually the number one request from clients was to make them brighter. So, there's that.
As someone who loves the LEDs for the fact that I finally have bright blues and greens and softer reds and yellows, I totally understand that
I love your depth of research for every video you've done. While we are on the topic of lighting, put an inline dimmer on your lava lamps. You can run them longer without overheating the wax and they'll flow real nice.
This brings joy to my heart! I thought I was the only one that felt this way about led Christmas lights.
This is one of my favorite themes that you show! I have been painting nail polish on bulbs since you first showed how. I love the colors. Thank you for the new ideas!
My biggest issue with LED Christmas lights is how many seem to have PWM flicker, so whendriving by or darting your eyes around you see multiple instances of the same lights.
YES, the flicker I'd the real thing that needs to be abolished!
This is my biggest complaint as well, the brightness level bothers me but the flickering is the worst bit for me.
Yes. This.
I easily limited the flicker by connecting them to a simple 4 diode full wave rectifer circuit. This makes the LEDs flicket at twice the frequency and be off for a much shorter time during the few degrees of phase when the voltage is too low to light the LEDs. Please don't do this unless you are very experienced with high voltage circuits, or get your mother-in-law to test it.
This was wildly entertaining. Thank you.
And I struggle even with “warm” LEDs. I haven’t seen any that don’t look harsh. Ever. Their brightness seems to stick around for a half-second after I move my gaze away. So I’m hoping we have enough incandescent replacement bulbs to last until someone makes the perfect replacement.
Thanks for the video!
I truly believe in the nail polish method and will be trying it this year. It really is an unsung hero of crafting as it is both durable, pigmented and can be found on the cheap. In my youth we used to use it to customise our Nokia 3310 covers and they went in and out of pockets without any issue.