When you’re looking for stylish and versatile, yet cost-effective lighting, LED strips are there for you. Varying in lengths and colour, those little guys can give you really impressive effects, both as main and accent light. Interested? Here’s some of the most common inquiries about LED strip lights.
1. What are LED light strips?
Simply put, a LED strip light is a slim, long strip or tape consisting of small circuit boards with LEDs placed on them at regular intervals. Its backside has an adhesive, peel-and-stick layer, which allows it to be set up on practically any surface, e.g. plastic, wood or metal. Length of a single strip varies between one and five metres. Colours of LED strips are also varied — the most common is cool white or warm white, but they can be blue, red, green and any combination of those three. Some strips can even change colour. LED tape/strip’s most common placements are banisters, stairs, wardrobes, bathrooms, kitchen counters and bedrooms. There are two types of LED strips — plug and play and wired. Plug and play variety can be set up practically from the get go, can be moved around rather freely and doesn’t require an electrician to install safely, while wired variety must be connected to mains, is rather permanent and might need an electrician to install properly.
2. Do LED strip lights need drivers?
The plug and play ones don’t, as they have their own power supply. Mains-wired ones need one, as they run on 12 or 24 DC to which the mains 240 V AC must be transformed. The wattage of a transformer (driver) must cover the wattage of the whole strip powered by it, plus 20 per cent (to prevent overloading the transformer). This depends on the size of LED chips and the length of the strip — 60 small chips (3528) requires five watts per meter, while 60 bigger chips (5050) require 15 watts per meter. For example, you’ll need a 24 W LED driver for a four-metre-long strip with small chips.
3. Can LED lighting be dimmed?
Of course it can. Plug and play LED strip kits are always ready for some dimming action. Mains-wired ones are a bit trickier, as they require dedicated dimmable drivers — make sure your chosen one is labelled with ‘dimmable’ before you buy it.
4. Are LED strips waterproof?
There are free variants here — non-waterproofed, splash-proofed and waterproofed. The waterproof variants are tightly sealed within silicon tube, which enables them to be used even in wet places, e.g. in bathrooms or around the pool.
5. Can LED strips be cut or/and joint together?
LED strip lights can be cut to length, as long as you do it in the easily distinguishable marked spots, e.g. you can cut a four-metre strip in two or just cut one metre off if it suits your needs. The cut-off parts can be used separably in different places. As for the connecting part — it’s also a viable option. You can do it with a right connector: an 8 mm for single colour small chip (3528) strips; 10 mm for single colour large chip (5050) strips or RGB connector for multi-colour large chip (5050) ones. Connecting strips is practically effortless — just insert the two ends into the connector and clip it shut. Make sure not to exceed the total length for your transformer as it will overload.
6. Can LED strip lights be bent?
This depends. Standard, non-waterproof variant LED strip tapes can be easily bent around the corners — as long as the bending comes at the ‘cut’ marker. You can also cut them and make bends with soldered wire, but it’s far less subtle for the observer. The silicone coating on waterproof variants lessens their flexibility, so they can’t be bent around corners. Your only option with them is cutting and soldering the adjoining lengths.
7. Are LED strip lights safe?
Just like any other LED based light source and electrical device — they will be safe if installed correctly. Plug and play variants are less risky, as they aren’t connected to the mains. If you have any doubts, you should enlist the help of an electrician while installing a mains-wired LED light strip. Moreover, LED lights don’t heat up and stay cool to the touch. This makes them ideal for homes with small children.
LED strip lights – a worthy purchase
LED based lighting is currently the most cost-efficient way to illuminate your home, as it converts nearly 90 per cent of consumed energy into light. And LED strip light is one of the cheapest to run — a typical one is approximately six times cheaper than an equivalent incandescent light source. LED lights are also long-lived (between 50k and 100k of working hours), so you won’t have to change them for a long time.