You LED up my life - Ambient lighting with LED light strips

May 2, 2022 5:35 AM

I would really appreciate some help figuring out how to get the right type of LED light strips installed to provide nice ambient lighting in my living room.

My apartment (which my wife and I own) has a ceiling with wood beams and a -7% slope, starting at 4 meters / 13 feet high. Around 10 inches below the ceiling where it meets the wall at the 4 meter height, there's a sort of cut out 'shelf' that's around 5 inches deep.

It's like the interior wall just stops and is capped off 10 inches below the ceiling, and the exterior wall serves as the interior wall from that capped-off level to the ceiling. Hard to explain - let me know if I need to try again or provide photos.

The top of this capped off interior wall seems to be a great place to install some LED light strips to provide nice ambient lighting. The 'shelf' is around 6.5 meters / 21 feet long, and it's located in our living room. It's high enough up that most light strips I've looked at wouldn't be directly visible to average-height folks.

Now I'm trying to figure out which LED strips to install, and whether to get an electrician to do the work for me.

I bought a starter kit of one Philips Hue LightStrip Plus together with a Philips Hue Bridge. This set was on sale at a local hardware shop, so I picked it up on a lark. I have not opened it and can still return it, if I decide to go a different route.

The starter strip is 2M long, and 1M extensions can be added. The extensions can also be cut. So, to span the full 6.5 meters, I would need to buy 5 extensions and cut one of those. The strips aren't cheap, but my hope was that they are high quality, and that I might be able to do some interesting stuff with them (like maybe see whether syncing them up with my projector might produce an interesting effect and/or being able to easily control the lights from my phone, perhaps even remotely).

I am concerned that these are consumer grade products, and I'm also concerned about the power unit for these. It seems there's a reasonably long power cord and a reasonably bulky transformer plug at the end of the power cable. I'm concerned that I won't be able to plug these in and keep the electric hardware hidden.

Should I give it a shot with these consumer lights, or would it be better to call a professional to perform the work (hopefully doing away with the bulky electric hardware)? If I call a pro, what should I consider when evaluating different light strips, installation methods, etc.?

posted by syzygy to Home & Garden (10 answers total)

I am concerned that these are consumer grade products

I have serious doubts about whether there's really such a thing as "professional grade" LED strip lights, except maybe for stuff that's meant to be installed outside and thus has to hit some certification for water/weather proofing. The Philips stuff will have UL certification & whatever other safety certifications are necessary to be sold in your country, so you're fine there.

(hopefully doing away with the bulky electric hardware)

Well, that bulky transformer is pretty necessary, as it transforms the AC current coming out of your wall to the DC current needed by the lights. So an electrician can't really do away with it. You could have an electrician install another outlet somewhere more hidden to plug the lights into, but it does sound like that might be a bit of a project.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:24 AM on May 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

Are there outlets on the wall below the shelf? If so (and I'm understanding right thinking that is an interior wall) it would probably be a simple matter for an electrician to extend that circuit up to the shelf. Depending on the nature of the framing they might even be able to install a recessed box (like used behind tvs) facing up that would completely hide the xfrmr.

There is also surface runway available (wiremold is a common brand) that would allow something a little nicer looking than an extension cord run along the wall.
posted by Mitheral at 10:23 AM on May 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: soundguy99: I have serious doubts about whether there's really such a thing as "professional grade" LED strip lights.

Ok, that's good to know. I wasn't sure what type of strip might be used in a high end installation, and whether they might be of a significantly higher quality than the ones I have.

Mitheral: Are there outlets on the wall below the shelf?

I already had someone run electric up to the shelf, but it's just a capped wire without any outlets installed yet (we moved in late last year and are still working on the place a bit). I am planning to have outlets installed though, hopefully directly on the shelf, itself. You're right about the shelf being the closed top of an interior wall.

Also, I typed my earlier description while not looking at the shelf. Rather than exterior wall being exposed behind the shelf, it's a large, wooden cross beam that the other beams slot into, sorta like Lincoln Logs. Not super important, except that the beam is a structural member, and I wouldn't be able to / want to drill or cut into it in any way. Small screws, nails or staples would probably be OK, though.
posted by syzygy at 11:22 AM on May 2, 2022

Response by poster: soundguy99: Well, that bulky transformer is pretty necessary

True - 'doing away with' was a poor choice of words. Swap 'doing away with' with 'hiding', I guess.
posted by syzygy at 11:27 AM on May 2, 2022

Lord Oscar recently put up some recessed LED lighting in our living room. He had to try a couple strand types to find one that had the right density for the "glow" we wanted. Our walls are white, so running an extended white cord down to a corner where the transformer could be tucked away worked, but we've got wooden wire mold for other purposes that also looks OK. I gotta say, it's pretty fun to make the room glow different colors, and it's also nice when you want an overall soft light.
posted by LadyOscar at 12:34 PM on May 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

There are several different types of LED strip available, differing in brightness, number of LEDs per meter, power supply, and color-changing ability. (Some strips can only be one color at a time, others you can individually control the color of each light, which might be overkill for your purposes). Some are controllable via WiFi, less expensive options use a remote control.

All are trivial to install; they have an adhesive backing and just, y'know, stick on. The only reason to hire a professional installer would be if you want to hide anything away inside the wall instead of just plugging into an outlet.

Personally I think the Philips Hue strips are ridiculously overpriced; you can get a hundred feet of lower-density light strips with a remote control for about thirty bucks. I'd suggest starting with one of the less expensive kits first, just to find out if you like the overall aesthetic; if that turns out to be not bright enough or not the color range you're looking for you'll at least have a baseline for what to look for in an upgrade.
posted by ook at 12:41 PM on May 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: The Hue strips are expensive, but come with warranty, apps, compatibility (other controllers can talk to Hue) and instructions! I sell a lot of LED strips that are for various lighting integrations, and they're best not used if you don't know what you're doing.

Some of the really cheap strips might have a blown LED, which sticks out like a sore thumb. The really cheap strips also can only be all one colour.

There are various grades and technologies of LEDs strips. Most of the individually addressable ones use the same technology, which some people can detect a faint flickering in certain colours. Higher end ones use a different technology that refreshes much more quickly, and won't be noticeable next to an LCD screen.
posted by scruss at 5:15 PM on May 2, 2022 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: ook: Personally I think the Philips Hue strips are ridiculously overpriced; you can get a hundred feet of lower-density light strips with a remote control for about thirty bucks.

I don't want to overpay for the brand name, but comparing the linked strips to the ones from Philips Hue, the strips you linked are rated much dimmer than the Philips strips. Moving closer to the brightness of the Philips strips with a known brand (Kasa) cuts way into that price differential. I will do some more comparison shopping before I open the box, though - thanks for your input.

scruss: they're best not used if you don't know what you're doing.

Does this apply to all LED lightstrips? Are you suggesting that I go with a professional installer, whether I choose to go with the Philips strips or ones from a different brand?

Some additional details: The room in question is pretty big (for a European apartment). It's around 45 sq m / 500 sq ft + the 4m ceilings. It serves as our living room, kitchen and eating area. It's basically the central room of the apartment, where we spend most of our time, both as a family and when we have guests over.

I am hoping the light strips will be able to output enough light to make a noticeable difference in the overall level of ambient light in the room at night. I'm not looking for a solution that's a nifty novelty. I'm hoping these will be practically useful, as well. We have three other ceiling fixtures in the room, but they're more localized. I'm hoping the lightstrips will help even out the level of ambient light in the room at night.

Also, this is basically our showcase room, so I am willing to spend a couple hundred euros extra for quality. I do not want to cheap out and end up with something that looks hokey.
posted by syzygy at 3:05 AM on May 3, 2022

Response by poster: scruss: Higher end ones use a different technology that refreshes much more quickly

Would these Philips Hue light strips qualify as higher end for this purpose, or are there other, even higher-end models you'd recommend over these?
posted by syzygy at 3:15 AM on May 3, 2022

Best answer: You won't need a professional installer for Hue. They're designed for the consumer user.

The items I sell are bare LED strips - along the lines of this: Adafruit NeoPixel Digital RGB LED Strip. There's no driver, no power supply, no interfacing. Our customers are expected to know what to do with this. Hue things are: follow instructions, plug stuff in and it works!

I don't know about the actual quality of the Hue LED strips, but they come with a warranty, unlike our kit. The high-end devices I was thinking of are generally built up from components and heatsinks and large power supplies. Some of the individual colour LEDs can be as large as 5 W, so they're hundreds of times brighter than consumer strips, and are designed for high-ceiling industrial, venue and retail use. At the very high end, a single high power LED would cost more than your entire Hue starter kit.
posted by scruss at 2:01 PM on May 3, 2022 [1 favorite]