Here's a detail question -- in years past, was there any consistency to how colored C7 or C9 lamps were added to new Christmas light sets at the factory? Current sets all have the same number of each color in a designated pattern and I assumed that's how it always was. I realize that most older C7 or C9 light sets only had 7 lamps, but I still figured that overall, the same number of each color was used. In other words, if you added up the number of each color lamp in a variety of sets, it would average out to be the same number of each color.

However, I came across an eBay listing for vintage lamps that said "The reason that there are uneven numbers of each color is that when these were originally sold in the 1960s and 1970s, they put 7 red, 7 blue, 5 green, 3 orange, and 3 white in each box of 25." This was in reference to Noma and Paramount C9 sets. Does this sound right? Did manufacturers favor red and blue lamps?

If that's true for boxes of 25 lamps, how were they allocated to sets of 7 or 15? Randomly?

-------

Going one step further, is there a particular pattern you use in your sets? Do you allocate each color equally or do you add more of one color than another? I'm sure 99.9999% of people absolutely don't care but if anyone cares, its probably someone here!

For some reason, I'm really intrigued by this!

honestly i'm not sure of how they divided up the colors in the vintage sets, I do know that in my older sets had only 4 colors red,blue,green,amber and on a 25 light set there was always  a red on each end so when you plugged sets together you had 2 reds next to each other because of this I always rearranged all the bulbs to follow a set color pattern; amber,red,green,blue yes, it bugs me when the colors aren't in sequence (why,I have no idea) the new sets i got from Home Repo at the end of last year now have 5 colors so you now get 5 of each color in a 25 light set instead of 7 red & 6 blue,green,amber BTW some places sell sets with white as the 5'th color instead of pink, not really fond of the white ones!

For me it depends on my mood and the application. If the lights are in a random installation (such as on a tree) then the sequence doesn't bother me unless it so happens that there are too many of a colour. If the lights are on a straight line, stapled to the surface so that each lamp points in the same direction, then it would bother me.

Around here, I haven't seen a preassembled C7 set for sale in years. Either you buy a set that has no lamps, and the string is folded in a cardboard sleeve like extension cord packaging, and you supply your own lamps, or you get a lamp-less set in a box with enough packages of lamps for the entire string. Either way, the end user has some input on how the lamps are sequenced.

In all of my older sets, they truly seem to use less yellow/orange and white than blue. I think they were using less of the brighter burning colors to avoid washing-out the less bright colors, like blue.

Many of my sets also only included 1 white bulb (I'm talking old sets here, they are in my gallery...old as in 10 watt C7 old)

When GE began packaging the 4 lamp sleeves into their stringer sets is when I noticed an even color pattern. Again, white wasn't too commonly included.

Around the late 50's, early 60's, light set manufacturers began using Japanese bulbs with American stringers. In the 25 lamp sets, the Japanese bulbs came in a 5x5 cardboard box (a format still used to this day!) and the Japanese bulbs followed the old American assortment of 7 reds, 7 blues, 5 greens, 3 orange and 3 white.

Along with GE packing bulbs in 4 lamp sleeves in string sets, once other manufacturer's sets were made in Taiwan or Korea (which happened after Japan), the colors began being evenly distributed.


When I display my vintage lights, I keep the old pattern of more blues and reds and few yellow and white. On my newer C7 LED retrofits, I keep a pattern of green, warm white, blue, orange or yellow, red. This pattern keeps 2 bright colors from being next to each other.

Thanks for the replies, everyone! I've always arranged lamps in an even, repeating pattern in all my sets (yellow, green, red, blue, white, orange). This arrangement does seem to make the lights look a little warm, though, so I might consider "weighting" the cool colors a little more heavily. Yellow lamps look especially bright so maybe just a sprinkle of those will be sufficient. I like as many colors as possible, but they don't necessarily need to be in equal numbers.

Should also mention I'm only referring to opaque (ceramic) lamps.

I am generally a fan of the clear C7 and C9 lamps (and the twinkle ones especially) but I have some colored fluorescent C7 type that I really love.  They have twice as many "Coral" as any other color, so I alternated them to space the coral ones evenly throughout the strings (several strings connected end to end) and it looks beautiful.