L E D christmas lights cheap but need painting

You can buy small tins of coloured laquer paint in shops that sell models (toys for kids, that is, not oggles for big boys) or craft supplies.

Or even experiment with ladeez nail varnish

Or adding resistors ...

Would they look good on a tree or bush outside?

Transparent acrylic - sold by model shops.

Any type of paint used for that will look fine when applied, but terrible o nce the lights power up. DAMHIKT. The sensible solution is to reduce curren t. Coloured sweet wrappers give an even amount of colour if you must, thoug h the colours don't come out as strong as the wrappers look so be prepared to double layers on some.

NT

I remember an actual paint for the job residing in a desk for years on a ship, it was used to colour red the occasional lamp over the chart table for use at night. Saved bothering the grumpy electrician to change the lamp if it failed at night , took a clear lamp from elsewhere and dipped it. Ships electricians make the engineers look angelic and remember Pounder on here was a ships engineer.

Worked well enough. A quick search shows Conrad as one supplier of something similar.

G.Harman

Up to the 1970s, "lamp lacquer" was quite common to colour light bulbs. Good theatrical suppliers stocked it.

Open up the power supply and lower the drive to them. Will use less electricity and the set should also last longer.

Would have been cheaper to buy the half price coloured ones in Tesco for £7

Owain

Just pass them onto someone who wants bright ones - plenty seem to want them. And buy some that you like.

I wanted to cut down the output from a 3.5W warm white LED to just a glow. Tried a black marker and it did the job. For black, it's quite translucent, patchy of course and the light is more red than it was. Other colours are available.

Do they get significantly warmer?

Not that I've noticed - it's still warm, but only about 35C at most.

Permanent marker pen. I used these pens to 'paint' over bright LEDS in equipment