For many who grew up visiting older relatives during the holidays, memories of childhood Christmases are swathed in a warm glow that feels like the calling card of the season: a combination of colorful bulbs, lit candles, and soft lamplight. In recent years, though, it feels like the holiday season has traded its cozy tones for a much cooler, even sterile color palette. As it turns out, that’s not just a quirk of our rosy collective memory.

David Andora, a multidisciplinary creative who’s worked in branding, production design, specialized lighting, and parade events, set out to understand why Christmas looks so different today. He discovered that, with the advent of light-emitting diode (LED) technology, classic holiday lighting has become something of a lost art. 

“When LED lights started becoming the norm for Christmas lights, which happened quite a while ago, one of the things that was completely missing was that warm, peachy glow that came off of those incandescent painted big bulbs,” Andora says. “Each year I would go to the big-box resellers, look at the new Christmas lights, and wonder, ‘Why is no one making these?’”

So, he decided to do it himself. Andora’s company, Tru-Tone, caters to a growing audience of customers who want the look of a retro Christmas without any of the accompanying fire hazards. The company declined to share exact sales numbers with Fast Company, but it’s seen major demand since its founding in 2020, experiencing growth of about 50% over the past several consecutive years. A 25-light set of Tru-Tone bulbs costs about $65, making them significantly pricier than similar options at big-box stores (a 100-count strand at Home Depot retails for about $50).

Tru-Tone’s secret, Andora says, comes down to a fairly simple design trick that pairs

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