At Christmas I made the mistake of hanging a REGULAR string of lights in my 5 year old's bedroom so he could have a cool decoration/night light for the holidays. But after the holidays, I couldn't get them out of there. A few months later, they burnt out. Imagine the angst. So I hung another string, and another and another....until I was out of them. By then it was almost Christmas again! I finally decided to buy him the LED's so they wouldn't burn out so fast. So far, so good. They're on every night and half the time during the day when I forget to unplug them. I hope they last a long time. In the meantime, the colors are nice and vibrant, and although there's actually less lights on the string than a regular string of 100 lights, the 70 or so lights still emit about the same glow. Not sure I'd want them on a Christmas tree, but they are suiting their purpose right now very nicely!