Best outdoor Christmas lights: 8 festive finds to light up your home

Looking for the best outdoor Christmas lights? You've come to the right place then. We love decorating the inside of our homes for Christmas, but this year especially, we think we should be paying just as much attention to how we deck out the outside of our homes too by adding the best outdoor lights! Wrap em' around your porch, hang them from your porch, hey, if you want to have a light up Santa complete with a sleigh and nine reindeer, then you go for it.

But with so much choice out there, how do you pick the best lights for your home? Well lucky for you we have rounded up all our favorites and there is something to suit all budgets and styles. There's classic fairy lights, tasteful light up decor and fun novelty picks, plus you'll also find a mix of battery powered and plug in lights too.

Keep reading to find your perfect buy, then check out our outdoor Christmas lights ideas for more inspiration on how to decorate your porch or yard for the festive season. 

You can't go wrong with a set of a classic warm white fairy lights can you? We love trailing these along the room and around windows so the whole front of the house glows in a lovely subtle (but still suitably festive way). You can join up to four of these sets together, creating a length of 432ft, and you can control the eight lighting modes really easily with a remote – the remote even remembers your last setting automatically, so no need to create a disco in your yard as you try and find the right one.

How cute are these vintage-style lights? Very Home Alone vibes here. They would look so cute around a porch or hanging above a window. One set is 25ft so you will probably have to buy a couple if you want them to go two windows, but you can connect these set together if you want to cover your home in them.

Icicle lights are so effective and yet so easy to hang. They look gorgeous hung under the eaves or above your windows so add a load of sparkle but using just one string. Like the majority of our best picks, you can connect these with up to three more strings, so you can control all of your lights with just one plug and just one remote. This set has eight modes to choose from plus a timer too. 

If you are wanting to deck your halls on a budget, these lights can't be beaten on price or quality. You get two sets that can be connected together to create a string of 32ft – on top of that you can connect three more strings should you need to. The rounded tips of the bulbs create a more all over glow and the white string is ideal if you have a white frontage and don't want the string to be visible. 

Looking for the best battery-operated outdoor Christmas lights? These are our top choice. You still get 8 modes and a timer, just no having to trail a cable from inside your house. Simply click on the timer mode and the lights will be on for 6 hours and off for 18, so you won't even have to go out and and turn the battery pack on. The bulbs are the perfect warm white we all look out for and the cable is clear so you won't even see it. 

We know that projector lights aren't to everyone's taste, but we think they are fun and super low maintenance if you don't want to be up on the roof stringing up fairy lights. Simple stake this light into the ground, plug it in and voila, giant snowflakes falling down the front of your house. 

A cute alternative to traditional fairy lights, these star-shaped lights will just add a bit more of a magical touch to wherever you hang them. You could even combine them with a string of fairy lights to double up on the festive vibes. There are a few colors to choose from here too, warm white, white, blue and multicolored. 

As far as light-up reindeer go, we think this one is actually pretty tasteful – we would even go as far to say stylish. It's made from a mix of rattan and wire so would bring a cute rustic alpine vibe to your front yard. It's battery-powered too, so no need to traipse a wire all the way out into the middle of your lawn. 

How to buy the best outdoor Christmas lights

When buying your outdoor Christmas lights you might have a style in mind, but there are a few other things you should consider before adding them to your basket:

Energy source

Plug or battery-powered? If you have an outdoor socket or can fit a cable under your front door, then great. But if having plug in lights would mean you have to leave the living room window open all season so you can hang a cable out of it, not so great. Make sure you think about how you are going to get power to your lights before you buy.

Size and length 

Most of the lights in our best picks can be connected with other sets, so measure out the space you want to hang your lights first before you order so you can get the right amount. 

Storage

Storing fairy lights is pretty simple, you can probably fit them in the loft or cellar with the rest of the holiday decs, but say you want something bigger, like our rattan reindeer friend, make sure you have a place to store them out of season too. 

Read more: 

• Garden lighting ideas 
• The best outdoor lights 
• Winter garden party ideas