• A patriotic mix of red, white and blue for the 4th of July.
• Quick flashes of bright colors for a birthday party.
• Slow transitions of soft colors for a romantic evening.

It’s like an instant pool makeover. But the magic is not limited to your pool. You can also light up spas, fountains, and other water features to match or contrast with your pool light show.

LEDs — short for Light-Emitting Diodes — were once only used for power indicators on stereos and other equipment. However, the capabilities of the chip-based technology have expanded and the cost has dropped dramatically since those days. Now LEDs are lighting up products from cell phone key pads to Times Square billboards.

These breakthroughs in LED technology mean that pool owners can produce a wider variety of colors in their pools than ever before. Clusters of individual colored LED bulbs are mixed and matched within a single light fixture to achieve any color of the spectrum. The clusters can be electronically controlled to come on and cycle through colors at varying speeds, and in different sequences of color.

LED pool lights are the most energy-efficient lighting option.

Pentair Water Pool and Spa reports that new IntelliBrite® LED Color-Changing Pool Lights [will link to site page] use only 37 watts to create the same light output as traditional incandescent and halogen pool lights do at 161 watts — more than 75% less. And their IntelliBrite LED Spa Lights use only 23 watts for the same light output compared to 47 watts for traditional spa lights. LEDs are more durable and can last dramatically longer than traditional incandescent bulbs. The reason? They are durable, solid state technology, with no internal filament to wear out.

A drawback to LED pool lighting in the past has been that when a single LED burned all of the lights stopped working, similar to old holiday light strings. New IntelliBrite LED lights continue to work even when a single LED burns out.