The Ultimate Guide to Using LED Light Strips In Your Home

If you’re running low on space in your home, but still want to create the big impact of impressive lighting, LED light strips may be the perfect addition to your space.

Being both easy to install, and versatile enough to be installed into rooms inside–or outside–of your home, strip lighting is a seriously impressive way to reinvent your space and make your home feel brand new again.

Whether you want to install strip lighting in your kitchen, bathroom or outside space you can choose from a variety of colours and lengths at BLT Direct that will suit your needs. We’ll help you to add some light back into your home and breathe new life into your space.

What is an LED Strip Light?

LED strips are a form of flexible lighting solution that have grown in popularity dramatically over the past few years. They come in the form of long strips in varying lengths that can be installed on many surfaces in your home.

The strips are made up of a few different components, including LED emitters, flexible circuit boards, cutline & connection points, and adhesive backing.

You can also order the strips in a variety of colours, depending on the ambience you want to achieve in your space:

• Very Warm White (827 - 2700k)
• Warm White (830 - 3000k)
• White (835 - 3500k)
• Cool White (840/845 - 4000-4500k)
• Daylight (860/865 - 6000-6500k)
• Blue
• Green
• Pink
• Red
• Yellow
• CCT (colour-selectable)
• RGB
• RGBW
• UV 400-405nm
• Violet

Can I dim my LED strip lights?

Yes! As long as you’re using the correct driver with your lighting, all LED strips can be dimmed.

What wattages are available?

At BLT Direct, we stock a variety of wattages for your LED light strips that can be used for different applications, including:

• Standard output: 4.8, 5, 5.5, 6, 6.3, 6.36, 6.6, 7, 7.2, 8, 9, 9.2, 9.6 W/m
• High output: 10, 10.8, 12, 14, 14.4, 15, 18 W/m

How to choose the right power supply for your LED strip?

It’s important that you always choose the correct power supply for your desired length of strip. When browsing our website and looking at our specifications for each lighting piece, you’ll be able to see how many Watts per metre it is.

Once you know what the Watts per metre is, you will have to multiply this number by the length of strip you want and then settle on an LED power supply that will take a higher load.

As an example, if you’re looking at a light that’s 6.36W per metre and you’re using a 3-metre strip, the total wattage is 19.08 so our 30W LED Driver would be the ideal choice for your application.

What are the different connection types on LED strip lighting?

Not all strip lights can be connected together, and not all strip lights run on the same power source.

These are the different connection types that you may find with your LED lights:

Driver connections types:

• Solderless - prewired to driver via connector
• Solderless - copper pads to driver cable via connector
• Soldered - driver cable to copper pads

Tape to tape connection

• Solderless - copper pad connector to copper pad connector
• Soldered - copper pad solder to copper pad solder

Where can I use LED strip lights?

LED strip lights are extremely versatile lighting solutions that can be used all around your house.

Here are just some of the areas of your home that could benefit from LED strip lighting.

Outdoor LED light strips

If you’re looking to use outdoor LED light strips to brighten up your outside space, you will typically look for a rating of IP67.

However if you’re using the lighting for swimming pools and ponds you will be looking for waterproof LED strip lights that typically come with a rating of IP68. These types of outdoor strip lighting can be used at a depth of up to 1.5m.

Kitchen LED light strips

Strip lights are a great way to add light to your kitchen, making it a welcoming and friendly place to cook and entertain guests. You can apply kitchen strip lighting to any kitchen surface, but it will look especially great under your cabinets for an ambient look.

Bathroom strip light

Keep your bathroom looking bright with bathroom strip lighting that’s durable enough to withstand splashes and steam, and create an environment that’s comfortable for you to use which will normally include strips that use a rating of IP65.

Bedroom strip light

Your bedroom is your own personal space, so you want to make it feel as cosy and private as possible–which can be easily achieved using the right bedroom strip light.

Reinvent your room with a range of colours and lengths that fit your style, whether you want a cosy white light or a fun green for your space–we have everything you could need at BLT Direct.

What is voltage drop on LED strip lights?

LED strip lights will either use a 12V or 24V constant voltage through a matching power supply, but at some point along the strip the voltage will begin to drop off as it can’t sustain the maximum voltage over an indefinite distance.

The effect of voltage drop is that your light may not be as bright throughout the whole length of the strip, but it shouldn’t be too much to worry about as the effect is not normally too noticeable to most customers.

If you were using a strip light longer than 10m, the end of the strip could potentially go as low as 17V which would lead to a noticeable loss in light–around 30%--which wouldn’t be ideal. In most applications, especially in the home, this shouldn’t be an issue.

If you’re worried about voltage drops on your LED strip lights, you can always check with the manufacturer to find out how long your strip light would have to be before you start to notice the signs of voltage drop.