How to do it: LED strips without the beginner’s mistakes
LED strips look easy – stick them up, plug in the power, done. But it’s precisely because they seem so straightforward that this is where most mistakes happen. The good news is that you can avoid nearly all of them by thinking three things through before you buy.
The first is power. A power supply that’s too small gets hot, hums and fails prematurely, so work out the consumption and add a good buffer on top from the start. The second is length: a strip can’t be infinitely long on a single run, because eventually it loses power and grows dimmer at the end. Plan where the supply will sit, and split long stretches up where you can.
The third is the position. If the strip is going somewhere with moisture or outdoors, it needs the right protection against water – otherwise it corrodes from the inside. And if you want a neat result, lay the strip in an aluminium profile: it cools the diodes, hides the individual points of light and gives that even, professional line of light instead of a row of dots.
Want to know exactly how many metres and how large a supply your project needs? Use the calculator at the top of the page and get the numbers sorted before you order.