EL wire and clothing lights

[BaudEByter]

Do you put EL wire or lights on all your night wear? First year and trying to figure out how much of this stuff I need

[Grumpy Otter]

The short answer is yes. You can get run over out there in the dark.

[Grumpy Otter]

The short answer is yes. You can get run over out there in the dark.

[AfricanFire]

Yes, lights on whatever you're wearing at night. Definitely. Front AND back.

For what it's worth, I've had pretty bad luck with EL Wire. It just has not been reliable for me at all. I use various pin on/tie on/necklace flashing lights that can easily be replaced if they die on you.

[BBadger]

If you don't have a particular costume design that requires the look of EL wire, you might want to look into LED fairy lights for lighting or something else.

EL wire, quite frankly, sucks.

• EL wire not very bright, and the colors not very unsaturated. Thicker stuff is brighter, but more expensive, and even more power hungry.
• It's relatively expensive, especially if you get some better quality stuff.
• It's fragile and a pain to repair. If you accidentally snag it and rip the wire you have to do some special soldering on small wires to get it to function again.
• It's power hungry and gets dim (dimmer) as the batteries wear down. This means more frequent battery changes or larger batteries.
• Even with fresh batteries EL wire gets dimmer with use. The EL wire's phosphorescent coating that lights up degrades, and the strip becomes dimmer with time.
• EL wire requires (and usually come with) special high voltage, high frequency drivers that often make annoying high-pitched noise when they run.