How To Install LED Strip Lights - The Definitive Guide

22 Jul.,2024

 

How To Install LED Strip Lights - The Definitive Guide

How To Install LED Strip Lights - The Definitive Guide

One of the most common questions we get here at Light Supplier is &#;how to install LED strip lights&#;. The truth is you don&#;t need extensive knowledge in electronics or lighting to install them yourself, and it can be done in one day as part of a DIY project. We do recommend consulting an electrician beforehand, but once you&#;re ready to install your LED strip lights, follow our guide below for a simple step by step process. The following information can be used to install LED Strip Lights under cabinets, inside furniture, or in wardrobe spaces.

MDL are exported all over the world and different industries with quality first. Our belief is to provide our customers with more and better high value-added products. Let's create a better future together.

Before Installing Your LED Strip Lights

Before going ahead with your installation, whether it&#;s for under cabinet lighting or somewhere else, make sure you choose the right colour and brightness. We offer a range of LED strip lighting that offers different colours, lighting intensity and styles to suit your preferences. For under cabinet lighting, we recommend strips that offer 600 LEDs per reel, and brighter settings for added intensity. We also suggest adding a dimmer switch to be able to control the intensity of your lighting depending on the time of day.

Recommended Supplies:

Depending on your project, we recommend adding the following supplies to your preparation list:

  • 2 reels of your preferred strip lighting
  • 100W Mean Well 12v Power Supply
  • Cerrowire extension
  • Strip-to-strip solderless connector
  • Strip-to-strip "no wire" solderless connector
  • LED strip Dimmer (optional)
  • Sharp scissors
  • Wire strippers
  • Measuring tape
  • 4 wire nuts
  • Black electrical tape

Choosing The Right LED Driver Based On Voltage

Before choosing your driver, you need to know that there are two types: those that use low voltage DC and those that use high voltage AC input power. Drivers that use high voltage AC are called off-line drivers. In most circumstances, we recommend using a low voltage DC input LED driver. Even if the input voltage is high, using a switching power supply will make it possible to use a DC driver. You may also find that cutting and connecting strips, as well as the length and density of the LEDs, affects what kind of drivers and power supplies they&#;d need. Always ensure that you read the information provided with your products to ensure that installation is carried out correctly.

Step 1: Double-Check Your Lights

Before installing your lights, it&#;s important to double-check that they work. This can be done in a safe environment and all your LED lights can be easily checked. Follow these steps to ensure that your strip lighting is working correctly:

  1. Create a &#;mock&#; installation that allows you to check for any missing parts or supplies
  2. Release the strip lights from their reel
  3. Attach the (uncut) lights to your power supply and turn it on
  4. Check that all of the LED lights are lit up
  5. Check the brightness and intensity of the lights and decide if they&#;re the right choice for the installation. It might be worth asking yourself if you need a dimmer or another colour for your project

Once you have completed these steps, proceed to step two. If you have found an error with your LED strip lights, for example, if one of the diodes is broken, this could be a simple connection error. If you&#;d like to fix this, read on to step 4 or get in touch with one of our team members today and they will be able to help you further or replace your strip lighting entirely. Checking that your lights are working correctly ensures that you have the right colour and intensity, and a mock installation will help you to see up close if your new strip lights fit in with your decor and style. Keep reading to find out how to install LED strip lights successfully.

Step 2: Measure & Cut Your Light Strip

Now that you have ensured that everything is in working order, you can start installing your lighting. Whether your strip lighting is to be used under cabinets, counters or inside furniture such as bookshelves, you will need to do the following:

  1. Measure the length of your installation area exactly. This can be done with a measuring tape and will determine how much length of your strip lighting you will need.
  2. Cut your strip lighting with sharp scissors to the exact measurement of your installation area. This will prepare you for a quick installation.

Note: LED lighting can only be cut in designated areas that are marked on the strip itself. If you&#;re not sure where to cut your strip lights, check out the following video:

Step 3: Strip & Power Connection

In order to make a connection with your power supply and dimmer (if you&#;ve chosen to have one), you will need to add a low voltage extension wire to the end of the first run of strip lights. To do this, you must cut it to length, strip an inch of the wire insulation for both the extension and the strip light, and wrap them together. You can also use wire nuts to secure your connection at this step, or simply add them loosely in order to tighten them later during your full installation.

Step 4: Connecting LED Strips Together

More likely than not, you will be using two sets of strip lights for your DIY project. If you&#;re using more than two, you will need to connect cut sections of LED strips. To do this, you will need a strip-to-strip connector. If you can, find that one that&#;s solderless, it will save you more time in the long run, especially if you&#;re installing your lights alone.

Once you have a connector, connect the first run of lights to the second and so on until you have a continuous strip that can be installed around corners etc. To attach the connector, peel back around 0.5 to 1 inch of the tape (both front and back). This will expose enough space for a connection. Before connecting, ensure that the wider white side is facing up.

Once this is done, find the positive and negative ends and note the wires coming from the connector to ensure that they align correctly.

Note: Although black and red wires can denote positive/negative, this isn&#;t always the case. Look for the right marking before attaching anything together. Also, ensure that your lights are not connected to any electrical units at this time.

For more led spike light Supplierinformation, please contact us. We will provide professional answers.

Step 5: Testing

Once you have successfully completed step 4, you can test your lights again. Using either wire nuts or a 2-way terminal block, connect all of your strip lights to a power supply. Ensure that all the wires are connected properly and that all of the diodes are working.

Also, take this time to ensure that your dimmer is working. If your lights are not as bright as before, or if they don&#;t come on right away, you will need to check your connectors. Sometimes the positive/negative alignments may not be securely connected, and you will need to disconnect and connect them again.

Note: If you notice a fault with your lights and decide to check the connectors, ensure there are no electrical currents to avoid injury or harm. 

Step 6: Install & Enjoy

Now that the harder steps are out of the way, you can carefully place your strip lights and install them where you wish! Be careful not to tug or pull on your strip lights, and always ensure that they&#;re installed in a way so that all of the diodes are level. Once they&#;re installed, sit back and relax with your newly installed LED strip lights! We hope you found our guide on how to install LED strip lights useful.

What are influencing factors of LED lights?

Most lighting designers believe that all LED products are of the same quality, and only a few of these manufacturers are capable of producing high quality led light.For applications that only serve as simple indicators, low quality leds are sufficient.However, high quality leds are required in many areas such as consistency, reliability, solid-state indication or lighting, especially in harsh environments such as expressway, military/aviation, and industrial applications.In the environment such as New York Subway, safety requirements are very demanding, LED must meet the requirements of high quality of the fundamental factors.

What are the factors that distinguish LED quality?How to tell the difference between the two LED lights?

In fact, there are many factors to consider when choosing a high-quality LED, starting with the chip and continuing until the assembly is complete.Manufacturing companies can make good, consistent wafers from high-quality LED materials, which in turn can make good chips.The chemical materials used in the wafer fabrication process are an important factor in determining all the properties of led lights.

A 2-inch wafer can cut more than 6,000 LED chips, of which only individual chips differ in performance.A good chip maker makes chips with very little variation in color, brightness, and voltage drop.When LED chip packaging is complete, it is possible that many of their performance indicators, such as perspective, will differ significantly.In addition, the impact of packaging materials is also considerable, for example, silicone resin performance than epoxy resin.

Leading LED manufacturers not only make high quality chips, but also have the ability to package leds according to their color, brightness, voltage drop and Angle of view.High quality LED suppliers will offer their customers products with consistent working characteristics, while lower quality LED suppliers will only offer similar "hybrid" LED products.For high-end applications with stringent quality requirements, such as airport runway boundary lights, FAA color and brightness specifications must be met, and LED packaging consistency is also strictly limited to ensure performance and safety.

LED with poor packaging grade used in the application of strict requirements will lead to a series of inconsistent problems such as premature failure, which is likely to lead to serious accidents.In order to avoid downtime and ensure that the LEDS specified in the design have reliable operating characteristics, it is important to avoid the use of "hybrid" products in high-end and high-quality applications.In addition to discrete LED, LED assembly and power supply have a significant impact on its performance, brightness, color and other indicators.Since ambient temperature, operating current, circuit structure, voltage spike and environmental factors can all affect the performance of LED, proper circuit design and assembly is the key to protect LED and ensure its performance.LED manufacturers also use a variety of technologies and different materials to design circuit structure and assembly. In most cases, the experience of LED assemblers can lead to differences in overall performance and reliability of leds in the same application.

With the rapid growth of LED demand, the number of manufacturers and assembly plants serving the global market is also increasing rapidly.Regrettably, however, the proliferation of support manufacturers is not only a large number of low-quality leds, but also their packaging and LED design engineers are relatively inexperienced.Therefore, in addition to accurately selecting LED suppliers based on existing experience, Oems must also look at their circuit design and assembly techniques to ensure that they meet design specifications and whether the design provides adequate heat dissipation, as the main cause of LED failures and performance inconsistencies is overheating.To ensure that the design requirements are met, Oems must test LED assembly and circuit structure by third party testing. To eliminate inequitable testing, many companies entrust third party testing to test LED assembly and circuit structure.An LED device may be tested or used for weeks under harsh conditions.During the test process, pressure, temperature cycle, voltage fixed/change, current fixed/change and other tests under harsh environmental conditions are carried out simultaneously to determine whether the LED meets the application requirements.A large number of parameter changes before and after the test are recorded, and changes in LED brightness, color, and voltage drop are monitored.Accelerated life cycle testing is a key test to avoid failure in specific application areas.The tests help ensure that leds that are expected to work for at least 100,000 hours fail early for just 1,000 hours.This is possible because low quality leds (or high quality leds that are not assembled properly) become less bright after 1,000 hours of service.In fact, a low quality LED with a higher drive current will initially be brighter than a high quality LED. However, an excessive current will cause the LED to heat up too quickly, resulting in dimming or burning out.In addition, there are instances where assembly techniques have a greater impact on LED performance than the chip itself.The design engineer should ask the LED supplier for the RELIABILITY specification of the LED, and should also conduct LED assembly tests to ensure that high brightness leds are indeed better.Some excellent LED suppliers can guarantee the reliability of their LED assembly technology for three years or more, and can further provide the final LED products including high quality LED and appropriate design for specific applications.

The importance of detection Two applications in the field of transportation help explain how adequate testing prevents LED failures in applications that provide high visibility.In the early s, leds were used for brake lights in cars and trucks.Some LED designs quickly develop inconsistencies in performance indicators and burn up, either because of the quality of the LED or because of the design of the product itself.Only recently, when it came to traffic lights, did LEDS become a more suitable source of light.Companies designing 8 - or 12-inch printed boards filled with leds must consider environmental and application requirements in terms of LED selection and design improvements.In any of the above cases, if the stress test or accelerated life cycle test has been done, a high quality LED or LED assembly can be considered qualified and can be applied in situations requiring longer service life and greater reliability.

Fair use Not every application requires high quality LED assembly technology.If LED assembly does not meet stringent environmental requirements, the application does not necessarily present a significant safety risk, or, if the final product does not have high maintenance costs, a less advanced assembly technique may be more appropriate.The bottom line is that leds must be affordable.Therefore, within the limits of cost requirements, factors such as the packaging grade of the supplier's products, experience in assembly design and testing must be considered.Designing to meet application and market needs is the most effective way to serve end users.

If the application requires a high-end solution, then the choice of chip supplier, design experience, and testing should all be considered.If you don't consider the selling price of high-end products, you should carefully consider other related factors that distinguish good and bad leds. LED suppliers with the ability to classify packaging levels, as well as those capable of conducting reliability and accelerated life cycle testing, can work together for a long time, which will help manufacturers develop high-end products with more reliable led lights.

Want more information on landscape spike light China? Feel free to contact us.