What It Costs to Run Christmas Lights in Every State (2026)

The short answer: if your lights are LED, almost nothing, wherever you live. A typical display of 1,000 LED mini lights costs $2.16 to run for the whole season at the national average rate, and under $6 even in Hawaii, where electricity costs more than anywhere else in the country.

The longer answer is the table below: every state, at its own 2026 electricity rate, for a typical LED display, the same display in old incandescent bulbs, and a big LED display.

The national number

At the US average residential rate of 18.19 cents per kWh for the first seven months of 2026, running lights six hours a night from Thanksgiving through New Year's costs:

• 1,000 LED mini lights (ten 100-bulb strings): $2.16 for the season
• The same 1,000 lights in incandescent: $17.68
• A big LED display of 5,000 lights: $10.80

That first number is why the electric bill argument against Christmas lights has quietly expired. It was a real cost when every string was incandescent. With LEDs it is less than a coffee. For the other end of the scale, we ran the same math on Clark Griswold's 25,000 lights: about $467 a season at Illinois rates today, or $57 in LED.

Where it costs the most

• Hawaii (46.28¢): $5.50 in LED, $44.98 in incandescent
• California (33.25¢): $3.95 in LED, $32.32 in incandescent
• Massachusetts (30.14¢): $3.58 in LED, $29.30 in incandescent
• Maine (29.99¢): $3.56 in LED, $29.15 in incandescent
• New York (29.38¢): $3.49 in LED, $28.56 in incandescent

Hawaii is in a league of its own, because most of its power is generated from imported oil. Even there, an LED display costs about $5.50 for the season. The incandescent version is where the bill actually shows up.

Where it costs the least

• North Dakota (12.36¢): $1.47 in LED, $12.01 in incandescent
• Nebraska (12.90¢): $1.53 in LED, $12.54 in incandescent
• Idaho (12.96¢): $1.54 in LED, $12.60 in incandescent
• Utah (13.16¢): $1.56 in LED, $12.79 in incandescent
• Louisiana (13.35¢): $1.59 in LED, $12.98 in incandescent

Every state

All 50 states and the District of Columbia, alphabetically. Costs are for the whole season, six hours a night for 36 nights.

The bulbs that change the math

One thing can make a display expensive anywhere: the old big bulbs. An incandescent C9 bulb draws about 7 watts on its own, so a 100-foot roofline of them is about 700 watts before anything else is plugged in. That roofline alone costs about $27.50 for the season at the national average, and about $69.98 in Hawaii. LED C9s do the same job for a small fraction of that.

Two other levers matter more than your state:

• Hours. Every number here assumes six hours a night. Leave the lights on from dusk to dawn, about 14 hours in December, and every cost more than doubles. A $10 outdoor timer pays for itself in the first season on an incandescent display.
• The bulbs you already own. If you still have incandescent strings, switching to LED saves about $15.52 a season per 1,000 lights at the US average, and about $39.49 in Hawaii. Where power is cheap the saving alone takes years to cover new strings, but LEDs last many more seasons and run cool, which is the better reason to switch.

How we worked it out

• Rates: US Energy Information Administration, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.B, average residential price of electricity by state, year to date through July 2026. Year-to-date smooths out the summer and winter swings in any one month.
• Wattage: a 100-bulb LED mini string at 5.5 watts and an incandescent one at 45 watts, the midpoints of the 4 to 7 watt and 40 to 50 watt ranges in our Christmas lights statistics study.
• Hours: six hours a night for 36 nights, Thanksgiving to New Year's, the same as the worked example in that study.
• What this does not include: your bill's fixed charges and taxes (which you pay whether the lights are on or not), time-of-use pricing, and December rate changes. Your exact rate is on your electric bill.

To run your own display at your own rate, use the free Christmas light electricity cost calculator. To work out how many lights you need in the first place, the light calculator does it from your tree height and roofline.