LED lighting

[Irving]

I've decided that I'm going to add some LED lighting to a few rooms in my house; my living room, a hall way, and probably much later on, my family room. I'm doing some closets as well, but those will be just plug-in with a magnetic door switch, so no help needed with those. I've got an idea what I want, and I know I can just order stuff online, but I thought I'd check in here in case anyone has either done something similar and learned some things, or does this for a living and can provide some better insight.

I came across this video and am interested in these products (the aluminum tracks).


I really like the idea of the multi-directional track that will give me two lighting options (up and against the wall) for the living room, however, I may end up just going with a simple UP orientation. While my living room is not currently the TV room in my house, I plan on it being the TV room when I'm done, and glare on the TV is a slight concern. That said, I won't be doing anything more complicated then, maybe a dimmer. No colors, no fades, no sections, etc. While the corner lighting used on the floor in the video looks cool, I wouldn't use it on the floor unless I also had it on the ceiling. Comprehensive lighting with little to no shadow is a cool concept for a workshop or kitchen, but not necessary for what I want/need. I'm considering using it in the ceiling corner in the hallway.

The purpose of this thread is to inquire about specific knowledge of either techniques, products, or both. Let's get down to the details.

Living Room:

15'x13'x8'. There is no room for crown molding to help with indirect lighting, hence the product in the video. The size of the driver should be easy enough to determine by getting the distance, and specs of the lights before hand. I plan to make an access panel that will house the driver for easy access and code compliance. I'll have one switch, likely a dimmer. The norm in the remodeled houses in my neighborhood is to use can lights. I [i]could[i] do that, but between all the recently blown insulation and the labor involved, it seems like LED strips are the simpler choice. As mentioned earlier, I'm looking for a simple, one color (warm) solution that is operated by a standard light switch and is not controlled by a remote, or connected to the internet.

Hall:

9'x3'6x7'. Right now, the hall has a single bulb on one wall that only has a switch mounted directly to the fixture. It's ugly and inconvenient to use. As a result, the hall light gets turned on about once a week, if that. There is one linen closet, and the furnace cubby that benefit from light, or else I might not even bother. Here I'm considering the corner fixture from the video, but mounted on the ceiling instead of the floor. At one point I had some grand idea of putting a cut out into the side of the wall to use as an accent piece, but I'm weighing the effort vs the outcome of that particular project. You can see a rough idea I had sketched onto the wall some time ago to match the curve of some of the other doorways in the house. Side note I'm considering eliminating the curved doorways in the living room altogether, but a cut out would still look good here.

I know that I can, and have been, ordering light strips and drivers from Amazon for the smaller projects (coat closet and under cabinet lighting in the kitchen). Amazon even has several different aluminum track options. I'm curious if anyone here is familiar enough with LED lighting to know if there are better products (LEDs, tracks, drivers, switches, etc) that are better enough in quality that I should shop outside of Amazon. Please give me your thoughts and experiences.


For those that are way more techy than I am, I also ran across this video about TV LED back lighting that I found to be pretty cool. I'd like to see something like this in person some day.
This is a long video with a lot of extra stuff, so just skip to 9:30 to see the fancy visuals and 10:15 for the explanation of what it's doing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPJQLvw3U44&t=977s

[asmo]

I have a bunch of LED strips for various parts of the house and and some for work. Can't stress how much a good power supply makes a difference. When you start bridging and T'ing multiple strips together you will noticably see the voltage drop.

[Irving]

Is there some calculation to use for number of T's to help get the right amount of voltage? I assume you need to overcome both the run, and the losses due to splitting?

[00tec]

My led strip uses about 1 amp for every meter. I am using 5050 led strip at 60led/m (I believe)

[Irving]

That brings up a good point. I think all the LEDs I have now are 5050. Are there better LEDs I should be looking at?

[hollohas]

Check out Americanlighting.com, their 'Trulux' line. I use this stuff quite a bit in projects I work on. They have many different options for the aluminum extrusions/lenses including surface, recessed and drywall mount. The LED tape comes in a bunch of different options including all the parts a pieces you need. They are local as well. You can't buy directly from them, but they have many local vendors.

http://www.americanlighting.com/asse...trulux2016.pdf

[Irving]

Part of the reason I want simple is because if I'm making this the main lighting in a few rooms, it needs to be operable by the lowest common denominator. I don't want issues selling, or renting in the future or the whole project will have been a waste of time and effort.

Realtor/renter "Hi, my kid was playing with the lights and now they are stuck on a red strobing affect and we lost the remote."

I want the most complicated operation to be a wall mounted dimmer switch at most. I'm not opposed to cool lighting, but I'll reserve that for other fun projects, and not updating house projects. I have color 5050s under my kitchen cabinets and am already annoyed at having to locate the remote just to turn them on.

Hollohas, definitely will check them out, thanks.

[Sparky]

Check out Americanlighting.com, their 'Trulux' line. I use this stuff quite a bit in projects I work on. They have many different options for the aluminum extrusions/lenses including surface, recessed and drywall mount. The LED tape comes in a bunch of different options including all the parts a pieces you need. They are local as well. You can't buy directly from them, but they have many local vendors.

http://www.americanlighting.com/asse...trulux2016.pdf

I have used these guys for a few hotel jobs I have done.

[hollohas]

One of the nice features of the Trulux LED tape is you can make it as simple or custom as you want. Want single color with nothing more than a standard Lutron wall dimmer? No problem. Want multi-zone touch screen wall controls, RGB color changing and mobile app control? That's no problem either.

[Irving]

I'm interested in what your set-ups are, but not for this particular project. Would you mind posting some pictures of the knobs though? When I think of a poteniometer, I picture something I found in a drawer at Radio Shack, but I'm sure they aren't that ugly now a days.