Integrating LED strip lights into any home lighting design is guaranteed to take the room ambience to new levels of sophistication and elegance. Strip lighting is a very versatile element in any home illumination mix, thanks to its flexibility and efficiency as well as its ability to add soft light without producing excessive heat.
LED strip lighting has come a long way from the old linear lighting featuring bright dots of white light radiating from all around kitchen cabinetry. Let’s explore the design beauty of LED strip lights.
What is LED strip lighting?
An LED strip light consists of a group of LED lights attached to a flexible circuit board. The light flexibly wraps around furniture, skirting boards, ceilings, stairs, brick walls, and paving, with its concealed installation delivering a soft illumination.
The Minifile Perimeter is an excellent product for wall washer applications. Luciferos‘s LED strip lighting adds the magical element to your lighting mix.
LED strip lighting output
This is a critical factor when selecting your designer LED strip lights. Measured in lumens per foot or metre, LED strip light brightness should ideally be at least 450 lumens per foot or 150 lumens per metre - equivalent to the light output of an old fashioned (but not energy-efficient) fluorescent tube.
Recommended brightness for various applications
Every metre of strip incorporates around 120 LED lights. Refer to this guide for lumens per metre for particular applications:
- Ambient lighting: 45 to 80
- Cabinetry lighting: 54 to 170
- Task lighting - near source: 77 to 138
- Task lighting - far from source: 350 to 1100
- Outside indirect lighting: 100 to 200
For outdoor walkways, 100 lumens is considered sufficiently bright.
The width of the Microfile System by Luciferos measures 19.8mm and can be supplied in recessed, trimless recessed, surface mounted, wall mounted, suspended or corner mounted options.
LED strip lighting on interior floors adds a beautiful light feature by casting interesting shadows on the walls. The electricity is run through a conduit in the flooring.
The Microfile Outdoor is an outdoor IP65 LED strip light that is best suited for driveways as it is watertight and can be driven over. Outside LED lighting has a real tangible quality, and the Microfile Outdoor installation is perfect for delivering an optimum mix of sophistication and moodiness in the outdoor setting.
How long do LED strip lights last?
LED strip lights have an average life expectancy of about 50,000 hours. LED strip lights behave differently at the end of their life compared to incandescent or fluorescent lights – the LEDs slowly and gradually lose their light output, with 70% of illumination diminishing over these 50,000 hours. On the other hand, standard incandescent lights burn out and fluorescent lights begin to flicker. In addition to dimming over time, if materials degrade at different rates, an LED can change in colour along its length.
If an LED strip light needs replacing, the whole set has to be replaced rather than only the affected light bulb. Sometimes, one or two lights can burn out before the others, resulting in a patchy effect.
Can LED strips light up a room?
No, LED strips cannot light up a room on their own – they can be used to light up an area of a room in combination with task, accent and ambient lighting sources.
The Archetto Space light fittings from Antonangeli are used as a non-invasive and suggestive light. The floating ‘pencil of light’ provides ambient light, keeping important areas well-lit and efficiently playing its role in the overall design plan.
Colours produced by LED strip lights
LED strip lights can produce a single fixed colour (white, red, green and blue) or all three RGB colours. With an RGB controller, all kinds of great lighting effects can be achieved. The RGB light controller can mix RGB colours and allows you to set different colours and light effects as well as change the brightness and produce dimming effects.
The Snake Light is a flexible LED light that comes in white and RGB. This can also be used in outdoor applications and is best suited for wet areas including bathrooms and kitchens.
Areas ideal for LED strip lighting
Kitchen and bathroom cabinetry:
The kitchen is one of the busiest rooms in a home. Given the amount of time spent in the kitchen, LED lights are now popularly applied to everything from inside glass shelves to around breakfast bars. Strip lighting under the kitchen island illuminates the stools and the grain in the stone on the front of an island bench. If you have beautiful marble, strip lights should be part of your kitchen lighting design.
For bathrooms, add an LED strip light to the mirror to make it stand out from the wall like a floating art piece. Integrating LED strip lighting under a shaving cabinet illuminates dark areas on the bathroom bench.
Gineico only uses non-dotting LED strip lighting, enhancing the design aspect unlike budget priced LED strip lights that provide a distracting ‘dotting’ effect.
Walls:
The Metro Wall and Ceiling features an LED strip encased in a flexible silicone diffuser. The Metro collection by Fabbian comes in a stainless steel finish and can be ordered in 6m and 12m lengths. An innovative feature is that the end joints can be arranged diagonally or curved.
Stairs:
LED strip lighting on stair treads not only helps with safety at night but also adds a light feature casting interesting shadows on the adjoining wall. Stair handrails illuminated by a white light give a floating feeling and also add to safety.
Outdoor:
Outdoor LED strip lighting options are available for lighting up paths, driveways, landscaped paths, and pond and fountain features. LED strip lighting outlining the edge of the pathways, with the shadows providing atmospheric light on plants, walls and ceilings at night.
Learn more about how Gineico Lighting used LED strip lighting in a stylish and practical way at the Mosman Residence project.
