8 clever ideas for LED strip lighting
Brighten up every corner of your home with our LED strip lighting ideas
LED strip lighting is a popular way to add brightness and intrigue to different areas of your home and garden. Advances in technology have given us strip lighting that’s extremely flexible and can be cut into smaller sizes, allowing you to add light to a much wider range of spaces than you could before. LED lighting is also available in a great selection of colours, which gives you huge scope to be creative and build a style and mood that’s your own.
In this guide, we outline some of our favourite LED lighting ideas, from the kitchen to the garden, so you can find the right style for your home.
Our LED lighting ideas:
Light up your stairs
Stairs are one of the most popular areas to install LED lighting and for good reason. The straight lines of stairs, handrails and skirting boards give you a range of different locations to install strip lighting. Stairs are also an area where lighting is key, with extra illumination helping to enhance safety, preventing accidents when you wake up at night.
Install LED lights on your handrail or either side of the steps to create a stunning visual effect that draws your eyes to the top of the stairs.
Highlight your TV
TVs are often the focal point of our living spaces, so this is a great area to highlight with LED strip lighting.
Installing LED strip lights behind your TV will give it a futuristic look, making it appear as though it’s glowing. This look is also ideal for movie nights, providing the room with extra light for comfortable viewing and helping the TV stand out against other items in the room.
Kitchen LED lighting
Add a modern touch to your kitchen with LED strip lights underneath your kitchen units. This will make your kitchen units appear as though they are glowing, which is the perfect subtle light to create a relaxing mood for parties.
LED lights can also be used above kitchen worktops. Here, the strip lights will highlight one of the most important areas in the kitchen, whilst giving an extra source of light for cooking.
Zone open plan areas
Lighting can be a powerful tool for changing the look and feel of your home. The fact LED lighting is available in a range of different colours and can be installed easily makes it an ideal tool for zoning different areas of your home.
Many of our living spaces are now open plan, with the living room, kitchen and dining area combined into one space. Although this is great for entertaining and family life, sometimes you might want to separate these areas to highlight one space or give each area a different mood. Colour changing LED strip lighting can be used to give each space its own separate atmosphere, or help to bring all areas together with the same colour.
If you’re hosting a party, you might want to have a brighter light around the kitchen island, with a softer colour in the TV area. For dinner parties, you may want to draw eyes towards the dinner table and away from the kitchen.
Under bed glow
Your bedroom is one area in your home where it’s important to create a relaxing, peaceful atmosphere and your large main room light often won’t do the trick. That’s where LED strip lights come in. As many of these lights have the ability to change colour, they can be adjusted depending on your mood, whether you’re about to go to sleep or just relaxing watching TV.
Strip lights can be placed behind your headboard to give this space a beautiful glow which will reflect up the wall. You can also install strip lighting on the underside of your bed frame to make your bed appear as though it’s floating.
Bring light to areas not covered by mains power
The relatively low power consumption of LED strip lights means they can also be powered by solar or battery power. As a result, they are an ideal way to bring light to areas of your home that aren’t currently connected to mains power. If you’ve already got your kitchen wired and you’re not looking to complete a renovation soon, battery powered kitchen cupboard lights can help you achieve the modern illuminated counter look without needing to call an electrician. A solar powered strip light can help turn a standard garden shed into a bright garden bar or summer house you can enjoy on those long summer evenings.
Decking lighting
As our homes become more open plan and the lines between the inside and outside become more blurred, it’s becoming increasingly important to ensure your garden has adequate lighting. LED strip lights are one of the easiest ways you can increase the safety and aesthetics of your decking area.
Use LED strip lights around the edges of your decking to give it a warm glow and draw attention to the seating area. If you have steps on your decking, use strip lights underneath each step to make it easier to see where you’re going at night.
Hot tub lighting
Hot tubs are an increasingly common sight in homes across the country as they allow you to enjoy the relaxing experience of a spa no matter how cold the evenings are.
You want your hot tub to be a place where you and your family can relax and unwind, so getting the lighting right is key. Although overhead lights or garden spotlights are an option, these will often be too harsh and won’t create the subtle glow you want. Installing LED strip lighting around your hot tub will give you enough light to find the hot tub at night and see the people you’re with, whilst still allowing you to see the stars. Upgrade to colour change LEDs and you can change up the look and feel of your hot tub depending on whether you’re relaxing alone or hosting a party.
Should LED strips be hidden?
If you’re installing strip lights to use as a functional light source, such as over a kitchen worktop, your strip lights may need to be visible to produce adequate light. However, if you’re installing strip lighting to achieve an attractive ‘glow’ effect, such as around a headboard, you’ll probably want to conceal them.
Can LED strip lights brighten a room?
Although they may not provide as much light as your main room lighting, they can add extra light to darker corners of a room or be used to create a more relaxing atmosphere when you don’t need your room to be too bright.
As you can see, LED strip lighting is a hugely adaptable product that can completely change the look and feel of spaces inside and outside your home. If you’re looking for more help with your lighting, take a look at our guides to choosing kitchen and bathroom lighting.