It’s hard not to feel a little better when you see the holiday lights decorating our neighborhoods – even when your neighbor overdoes it a bit, like the inflatable snowman dancing to choreographed lights and music down the street from my house.

And this year, THIS SPACE has even more reasons to feel good. Seattle area residents are quickly adopting the use of energy efficient LED lights for their holiday decorations.

A dramatic example came at the lighting of the Christmas tree at Westlake Center when the crowd cheered the announcement that, for the second year in a row, the tree was lit with only LEDs.

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons

Another set of thanks goes out to the Downtown Seattle Association, which switched to LEDs for its decorations this year.

And Monica Guzman’s entry in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Big Blog about when to put up holiday lights drew several comments from readers urging people to save electricity while boosting holiday spirits. She also noted how the folks on Candy Cane Lane decided to plug in their decorations a week later this year to save energy.

The advantages of the lights are as bright as Rudolph’s nose.

A string of LED holiday lights uses about 4 watts of electricity. That’s about a tenth of the energy needed to run a comparable string of incandescent lights. And the LEDs will last 20 times longer than the incandescent lights, so while you still have to untangle them, you won’t be spending so much time swapping out dead bulbs.

Want even better news, the price is coming down. Last year, a string of LEDs would set you back $18 to $33. This year, a quick Web search found several stores offering them as low as $8 a string.

That’s a great opportunity for this week’s ONE THING you can do to cut your energy use this holiday season and keep a little more green in your wallet. And for an even bigger savings, snap up any leftover LEDs during the after Christmas sales to get a jump on next year. You won’t even need to untangle those.