If this year you can remember how disheartened you felt after last year’s climb into the loft and all the straightening out of that tangled mass of old spaghetti you call fairy lights, only to find that, as usual, most of them aren’t working, now might be a good moment to consider investing in some new ones. Christmas tree lights today come in an inspiring range of different styles and colours and are vastly more efficient and versatile than the ones you’ve been clinging onto in that old box.

Christmas lighting has in recent years undergone a small revolution: those irksome filament bulbs which seem to blow as soon as you put the kettle on or even sneeze have largely given way to a new generation of LED (light emitting diode) lights. Vastly more efficient than their filament predecessors, consuming almost 90% less energy, they are also much less temperamental, last almost twice as long and emit a distinctly more brilliant glow to boot.

There is now a literally incandescent assortment of different types of Christmas lighting to choose from; most fairy lights have a series of different illumination options inbuilt as standard, from flashing, pulsing, fading, flickering, to constant, or a mixture of all in random sequence. And the choice of colour and design has also expanded – whether you want brilliant white stars or arctic-blue icicles, vivid red cranberries or warm white mistletoe berries, all are available in abundance. And if you prefer simple fairy lights, a huge range of LED colours and effects will render you spoilt for choice, from brilliant white, ice blue, red, golden-white and multi-coloured.

And the Christmas tree needn’t be the only ‘indoor plant’ you brighten up. If you have one or more of the larger potted plants you can brighten them up just as well. Or even one or two of those stylish bundles of twigs standing around looking under-dressed for the festive season, you can brighten them up with a little sparkle by draping a few fairy lights around them, too. Even if they’re not conveniently near to an electric socket, you can festoon them with any one of a broad range of battery lighting options, enabling you to forget about unsightly extension cables. Battery powered Christmas lights are also much safer, especially when used in dry wood decorations.

Traditionally the phrase ‘Christmas tree lights’ has tended to mean only those twinklers you weave and wend around the tree, but with an impressive variety of connectable battery lights and spectacularly vibrant rope lighting also on offer, you can be more imaginative about where you choose to locate additional Christmas lighting than at any time before. You don’t have to transform your home into a gaudy downmarket Santa’s Grotto – sometimes, simple plain white LED lights strategically adorning various features of your home can look stylish and tasteful (people are increasingly keeping some of them up all the year round). Why not make this Christmas the year to throw out the old and bring in the new?