Installing LED light strips indoors and outdoors

Have you looked at the govee kits?

Depending how deep and how handy you are, this can get complicated fast.

If you are installing lights indoors, easiest solution is to use aluminum diffuser track screwed to the studs. Stick the strips in that.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish? Are you adding accent lighting to a 100k kitchen remodel? Or are you adding rgb lights to your 14 year olds room?

Different applications take different levels of effort.

quote:

---

Definitely on the latter end of that comparison spectrum. A row just below the crown molding along the perimeter of my TV room, and a similar row around the perimeter of my side porch.

---

I'd go with premade kits in your situation. I've done a bunch of LED strips and DIY is cheaper for a higher quality, but you do need to understand power needs, voltage drop, power injection, and soldering basics.

For my installs, I screw the channel into the wall and then adhesive the strips to the channel. When install on backs of TVs, I use flexible aluminum channel and 3M double-sided tape.

Diffusers are necessary if you can see the LEDs directly or the LEDs are very close to the wall and the individual LED reflections are noticeable.

IMHO, if outdoors on your eaves, and multi-colored options, the govee lights cheapen the look of a house and make it look like something you see on the Asian shopping stores.

This is probably way on the other end of your budget but we just had the Gemstone permanent lighting installed and love it.

There's a 13 page thread on the Tech Board about installing lights outside.

Also, Quindor's site is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to these projects. This LED power calculator is especially useful.

I went with 12v pixels around the front of my house so I didn't have to run as many injection points. It wasn't extremely difficult, just very time consuming. The biggest pain was the channeling. I used vinvyl j-channel and drilled +400 holes 1 by 1. It would have gone much faster if I had made a jig.

It's well worth it though. I don't have to put up christmas lights each winter (or take them down) and I can change the display for LSU games, 4th of July, etc. I have it connected to my Home Assistant so I can control it remotely and put it on a schedule to automatically turn on and off when I want. I also bought a mini controller to keep on our camper when we hang lights on our canopy tent.

I've had them up for 2 years now I think and have only had to make 1 repair.