When we first started collecting Lemax villages, we went through a lot of batteries, there were cords everywhere and it took about ten minutes to turn everything off or on. We thought, “there has to be a simpler way to manage all of these cords,” and there is!

Lemax has a few accessories that allow you to manage the lights, sounds and movement in your vignettes. We will tell you about a few of our strategies in this Canadian Villages blog post.

The first thing that you need to know is that almost every Lemax item that has a light, sound or movement comes with a battery pack adaptor which powers them. If you look at the battery packs that came with your Lemax pieces, they have a power socket which, when plugged in, eliminates the need for batteries. The notable exception to this are the Lemax Sights and Sounds collection that usually come with an electric power pack.

In the past we bought several Lemax 4.5V 3-Output Adapter - White Fixed US Plug V.2 (94563) to plug into our buildings and accessories. These were amazing because one plug into the wall would light up three buildings (or accessories). So already, we had ⅔ less cords to hide, and did not need batteries!

A few years ago, Lemax released the Four LED Light String Moonlander (74276) which allowed you to plug four lights into one jack on the Lemax 4.5V 3-Output Adapter. This allowed you to light up to 12 buildings while only using one wall power outlet!! So, you can imagine how much easier it was to hide cords. Not to mention the extension cords running all over the place!!

We also plugged all of our power into a power bar, so we could turn everything off or on with one switch! Doing so made creating our villages much more enjoyable. With the flip of one switch on the power bar, we could light up and turn off our village easily!

Something else to consider when purchasing the Lemax 4.5V 3-Output Adapter is that for many buildings, this will eliminate the need for the battery pack box as you can plug the cord right into your moonlander lights. This reduces the need to find places to hide most of the battery packs that go into buildings!! For accessories however, you will still need to plug the power adapter into the batter pack.

As an aside, Lemax also has the Lemax 4.5V 3-Output Adapter (94566) in Black which is perfect for your Spooky Town scenes! However, they do not make a Four LED Light String Moonlander in Black right now. Still, you can get three buildings or accessories lit up with one wall jack, which we think is awesome!

A tip we learned last year was that a few of our accessories still needed batteries. For example the Lemax Jolly Trolly (04738) is moving and you don’t want a cord following it! We also hid the cord for our Lemax Harbour Buoy beside it so you didn’t see a white cord running across blue water.

Older Lemax buildings use incandescent bulbs. From about 2016 on, most buildings use the new moonlander LED bulbs which use much less energy, although we find they are not quite as bright. Having said that, they provide ample light for the Lemax collection. We have switched to using the moonlander LED lights for all of our buildings to lower the power consumption (we purchased the Four LED Light String Moonlanders). It is interesting to note that some Lemax buildings come with incandescent bulbs still, while most of them come with the Moonlanders.

Another note is that the Lemax 4.5V 3-Output Adapter does not plug into the older incandescent bulbs. You need the moonlander bulbs, a building with a direct power input (many of the Lemax Sights and Sounds) or accessories with battery packs.

One final thing… switching your village to using power packs will greatly reduce (and in most cases eliminate) the need to use batteries!

We really feel that thinking about power and all of the cords ahead of time will help level-up your vignette! We have learned a lot over the years about how to hide cords and reduce power consumption. If you have any questions or tips, please email us! And, if you have an idea for a blog topic that we can share our experiences with you, please let us know! CanadianVillages@gmail.com