Also, I installed another couple of stripes as ambient light in my living room and bedroom.
Then I went for Christmas decoration light on my balcony :-)
With that being said I earned some experience with led stripes, I made a couple of good and bad purchases. I left with three lots of spare stripes and couple of spare power supplies. Those are the things I learned during that time:
- first stripe I bought back in 2011 and (surprisingly) I still use it today. It was installed as ambient light in my living room, then it was painted twice so it wasn't shining quite well. I decided to replace it with new one. Once I removed it I cleaned it up and guess what. Still works perfectly. I reused it for ambient light in my bedroom as it does not produce too much light.
- Then I stopped, because back then it was quite expensive (cheapest 3528 price was more than 3x 5630 price as of Today).
- I bought waterproof stripe of 5630's for my kitchen light. It is the strongest light I could find, although they already offer 5730 which does the same but with half of power consumption.
- Waterproof led tape is quite heavy, so if you stick it to ceiling it may fall off. From my experience, stripes with 3m tape are the best (make sure it's original). Waterproof stripe is also more expensive.
- If you are not going with your led stripes outside or to really challenging environment, don't go for waterproof (I have never tried it in the bathroom, however).
- I dropped idea of having waterproof stripe in my kitchen and ordered regular one. It has been working perfectly for a couple of months and really, I don't expect any troubles with it.
- Sales people usually are declaring Watt consumption but from my experience it is usually lower then declared. Before purchase of power supply, I usually verify how much power my stripe is consuming using multimeter and add 20% of buffer to make sure power supply does not work at 100% capacity (will damage itself quickly if yes)
- For some reason I also started with waterproof power supplies and I already had to replace three out of four. For home installation it does not make any sense, so finally I also replaced them. Again, if you really don't need IP67, don't go for it.
- Also, waterproof is difficult to reconnect because you will have to damage protective silicone shield and then rebuild it somehow
- White cold is... cold. It is good for very modern interiors but if you want to make your home sweet home or add ambient light, white warm is good. For my kitchen lights I used white neutral and I am quite happy about it.
- It doesn't make really sense to me to buy led stripe with less than 60 LEDs per meter unless you really want to have particular LEDs clearly visible.
- One of very often emphasized feature of LED stripes is ability to cut and reconnect. To do this you need some very basic cutting/soldering skills. Please keep in mind that once you solder it, stripe is not flexible in that place anymore. If you buy a lot of 5m you can expect it to be soldered couple of times already.
- 90 degrees cornering with LED stripes is quite challenging
This is my spec cheatsheet (values are taken from LED specs, and by the way, 99% of LEDs used in stripes are made by Epistar.
| LED Type | Lumens per diode | Lumens per meter | Power draw per meter | My comments |
| 3528 | 6lm | 360lm | 4.8W | This is most likely 1st one I have bought. It is excellent as an ambient light and if you hide it behind the corner, with 300leds per meter you will see continuous light |
| 5050 | 18lm | 1080lm | 14.4W | |
| 2835 | 25lm | 1500lm | 10,8W | |
| 5630 | 60lm | 3600lm | 18W | This is the one I bought recently. Excellent if you have work area you need to bring some light into. It is also okay as an ambient light but expect it will also bring a lot of light to the environment. If you just want to emphasize something and leave the rest of the room dark, just go for 3528. |
| 6730 | 60lm | 3600lm | 9,6W | Looks very promising as it delivers as much light as 5630 only power consumtion is reduced by 50%. I will definitely try it in the future. |
And, by the way, Let type is just size of the LED. For example, 2835 = 2,8mm x 3,5mm
Have fun with your LED installations.
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