Top 10 Applications of LED Strip Lights

In the long history of human evolution, light has always held a sacred existence that we have pursued from the very beginning. What began as a need for fire has turned into an appreciation for the beauty of lighting. We use lights not only to see in the dark but also to accent our world and enhance our enjoyment. With the continuous development of LED light strip technology, lighting design has been given more functionality. Now we can add stunning visual ambiance to our everyday lives in locations like bars, coffee shops, movie theaters, nightclubs, and even inside our private living rooms. Different LED light strip designs are being used to create more excitement when we listen to music, romance when we want to set the mood, or peace of mind when we want to relax.

In 2015, a study conducted in a home elderly care center in the Netherlands resulted in evidence that accent lighting can improve patients’ well-being by cheering them up and lowering their anxieties. Bright lights with cool blue tones have an uplifting effect, while darker lights with orange tones in the same room create a more comfortable and calm atmosphere. In so many ways, lighting provides quality treatment and making our lives more enjoyable.

In addition to providing light, creating an engaging visual experience, and treating patients through psychological ambiance, light can also directly affect human health in non-visual ways. The biological clock in the human body synchronizes physiological functions according to a 24-hour cycle, otherwise known as the circadian rhythm. The natural light from sunrise and sunset combined with indoor lighting maintains our body’s biological clock. Many of the body’s natural processes like sleep, wakefulness, digestion, and hormonal changes can be changed according to how we set our circadian rhythms to environmental light. LED light can help regulate this system by implementing bright lights during daylight hours and moderate to low light during the evening and nighttime. This helps balances people’s biological clock and enhances their overall physical health.

What Places Can We Apply LED Lighting Strips?

1.0 Parks, Landscapes, and Garden Lighting

With the continuous improvement and progress of the global economy, people have higher expectations of their living standards and environments. That is why it is far more common now than ever to see LED strip lights integrated into urban structures. Parks, landscapes, gardens, bridges, and more embrace the beautification enhancement provided by artificial LED light sources. The decoration of LED strips refines the landscape and conveys the integration of natural and human environments. The beauty adds fun and flavor to people’s lives without taking away the natural elements we all appreciate.

1.1 Outdoor & Building Outlines, LED Linear, Arc, and Architectural Lighting

Every single night cities from across the globe are utilizing the power and beauty of LED light strips. In addition to ordinary street lights, various outdoor lighting elements like outlining buildings, emphasizing linear architecture, and more are being developed with fashionable and attractive colors and designs. This results in a cornucopia of fantastic visual effects.

Large shopping malls and various office buildings are expected to use lights to make dazzling visuals and enticing, colorful appearances for attracting customers. Architectural designs are emphasized for the enjoyment of local patrons and increasing tourism in areas often overlooked, all because of the utility gained from LED light strips.

1.2 Indoor Lighting, Hotel Rooms, Bedrooms, Kitchens, Lobbies, and Public Areas

Modern home decoration trends are increasingly emphasizing the combination of light effects and furniture. LED lighting tools have basically replaced traditional bulb lighting for efficiency and design. They are used in many places to create specific lighting effects to set off the atmosphere of the entire house layout. The living room ceiling and the TV background are the parts most often used with LED light strips. The effect of using light strips on the ceiling to match the main light is a welcome visual experience. When the high-bright light strips are used in this way, it can provide an independent lighting source to save energy. It can even provide a mild lighting effect for the times when no strong lights are used. When used behind a TV, it can diffuse the TV light source without turning on the main light, protecting the viewer’s eyesight. There are more popular locations like bookcases, cabinets, wine cabinets, indoor stairs, and others where LED lights are used throughout the home decoration.

Innovative LED lighting design has gradually entered the designs of major hotel chains. In order to enhance their economic value and attract more customers, hotels in different regions of the world are using LED Strip lights to enhance the guest’s experience. Many times the hotel lighting design incorporates art, unique themeing, and stories. Whether it is a hotel lobby, multi-function hall, presidential suite, or ordinary room, LED strips are widely becoming common decorations.

1.2 Indoor Lighting, Hotel Rooms, Bedrooms, Kitchens, Lobbies, and Public Areas

Modern home decoration trends are increasingly emphasizing the combination of light effects and furniture. LED lighting tools have basically replaced traditional bulb lighting for efficiency and design. They are used in many places to create specific lighting effects to set off the atmosphere of the entire house layout. The living room ceiling and the TV background are the parts most often used with LED light strips. The effect of using light strips on the ceiling to match the main light is a welcome visual experience. When the high-bright light strips are used in this way, it can provide an independent lighting source to save energy. It can even give a mild lighting effect for the times when no strong lights are used. When used behind a TV, it can diffuse the TV light source without turning on the main light, protecting the viewer’s eyesight. There are more popular locations like bookcases, cabinets, wine cabinets, indoor stairs, and others where LED lights are used throughout the home decoration.

Innovative LED lighting design has gradually entered the designs of major hotel chains. In order to enhance their economic value and attract more customers, hotels in different regions of the world are using LED Strip lights to enhance the guest’s experience. Many times the hotel lighting design incorporates art, unique themeing, and stories. Whether it is a hotel lobby, multi-function hall, presidential suite, or ordinary room, LED strips are widely becoming common decorations.

1.4 Furniture & Cabinets

LED strips offer an excellent way to bring out the natural structure of various furniture like wall and shoe cabinets. Usually, the embedded line of an LED strip is used by mounting on the furniture itself. If the appropriate color and brightness of the LED light strip are selected, the presentation of a room’s furniture can offer both visually attractive designs as well as light to see. Many pieces of furniture are already equipped with a dark slot where the LED strips may be installed. This effectively hides the light strip from view creating an extra natural light effect modern homeowners will find stylish and beautiful.

1.5 Smart Products 

With the increasing improvement of living standards, LED strip lights have begun appearing for use with various smart technology products. This allows the lights to integrate the characteristics of different product features for added enjoyment. For example, consider an aromatherapy machine equipped with RGB LED strips. When the foggy smoke comes out to offer a wonderful scent around the room, the light strips’ color also changes to set the mood. Even smart toilets are equipped with LED lights that show whether or not it is in use with a red indicator for occupied and a green light for when it is ready for use. That same application is true for smart trashcans that offer a red light/green light solution to let owners know when it is okay to add trash and when it needs to be emptied.

1.6 Tunnel Lights

Consider all the benefits of lighting an underground tunnel with efficient and bright LED light strips. Under normal circumstances, the design of tunnel lights is related to the safety of the workers and travelers. Therefore, engineers must choose high-quality LED strips with the correct brightness and color temperature to ensure that tunnel workers maintain a safe lighting situation 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. This helps reduce the potential for workplace injury and assures people are able to reach their destinations safely.

1.7 Photography Light, Makeup Lights, and High CRI LED Strips

LED strips are widely used in photography, makeup mirrors, mirror lights, and other industries. Photography lights are used to adjust the color temperature and brightness of the LED strips. This allows more control over how light will fill the model or object being photographed. The required sense of atmosphere makes the photos look clearer and more layered. Makeup and mirror lamps use high CRI light strips to make the light as close to natural light as possible, so the application of beauty products comes out smoothly.

The color rendering index and color temperature of the light strip will affect the end visuals. This can improve or reduce the comfort of residents. Poor color quality will reduce visual acuity and discourage accent lighting for illuminated objects. No one wants LED lights with lower color quality indicators that distort food, human skin tones, or make plants appear dull or unsaturated. Therefore, using LED strips with high-quality color rendering capabilities can enhance the beauty of space and the distinction of colors. Such a powerful tool can even affect people’s emotions and psychological well-being. 

In our lives, the color temperature created by the LED light strip is usually between 2,000k-6,500k. The value of the color temperature is different, and the visual perception and psychological cues trigger various effects in human beings. The lower the color temperature of the LED strip, the more warm red light. This results in a warmer, more comfortable feeling. The higher the color temperature, the more blue light. This results in people feeling more refreshed and clean. Combining LED strips with different color temperatures and brightness will give people other psychological effects.

1.8 Plant Growing Lights

The survival of plants relies upon photosynthesis, and that is achieved through light. It not only provides radiation for plant photosynthesis but also signals transduction which regulates their development process. Plants are in a constantly changing light environment throughout their life cycle. In the long-term evolution, plants adapt to the changes in the light environment and influence each other to change the surrounding visual environment. Due to the advantages of small size, lightweight, long life, adjustable wavelength, and light intensity, LED light has become one of the essential sources for regulating the plant environment. Moreover, LED is a new type of high-efficiency and energy-saving light source that can increase growing yield and shorten the time to harvest. This helps alleviate the food needs of many homes, communities, and cultures.

1.9 Lighting in Vehicles, Ships, and Electronic Equipment Decorations

LED light strips can provide drivers with safety lighting that doesn’t cause unwanted or dangerous glares so they can see pedestrians and passengers clearer. This is also an excellent solution for reducing the risk of eye fatigue for traffic participants by bringing safer and more practical visual experiences for everyone involved. LED lights have been widely used in vehicles, ships, and various electronic equipment to inform and maintain a safe quality of life.

Think about all the LED applications in modern car design with headlights (including high beam and low beam), front position lights, rear position lights, license plate lights, instrument lights, turn signals, brake lights, hazard warning flashes, and more. The same can be said for larger air and sea vessels that utilize navigation lights, tail lights, masthead lights, anchor lights, as well as a variety of signal lights. LED strips need to play a role in illuminating the environment and provide an attractive overall style of transportation vehicles.

2. What are the characteristics of light strips used in different applications?

2.0 The Characteristics of Park, Landscape, and Garden Lighting Strips

Generally, high-voltage light strips are used in park, landscape, and garden lighting environments. High-voltage light strips involve a simple installation, using high-voltage input without additional transformers Single-ended power supply can reach 100M without voltage drop, are usually waterproof grade IP67, and easy to separate at 1M per cut. They come in various colors, including white, warm white, cool white, red, yellow, blue, and green RGB.

2.1 Features of Outdoor Lighting, Building Outlines, LED Linear, Architectural, and Arc Lighting Strips

Architectural lighting is used for building facades and exterior decoration lighting. The lamp belt is required to be waterproof (IP67), dustproof, and UV resistant. In many cases, it is required to have a colorful visual chasing effect.

2.2 Indoor Lighting for Hotel Rooms, Bedrooms, Kitchens, Lobbies, and Public Areas.

Office lighting is used with hidden installation in office buildings, schools, supermarkets, shopping malls, and more. It can be combined with other metal profiles to form linear office lighting fixtures. The lamp belt is generally required to be bright with a high display, luminous efficiency, and uniform illumination to prevent dark spots. This way, viewers lower their risk of eye fatigue.

Aluminum slot lighting is used to illuminate ceilings or walls in homes, hotels, shopping malls, and more. The brightness of the lamp belt is lower than that of office lighting, but the range of color temperature and color choices is broader. This is mainly used to create an atmosphere and outline the object.

2.3 The Characteristics of Entertainment Venues, Bowling Alleys, Game Halls, and More

The light of the bar is one of the crucial factors to consider when illuminating an entertainment center. The light system can determine the bar’s atmosphere and mood, influencing the number of potential customers. There are many kinds of light used, including RGB light strips and magic light strips. These kinds of LED strips with IC can make the changes more colorful. With DMX, Madrix, Artnet, it can make almost any color effect that customers need.

2.4 Features of Furniture and Cabinet Light Strips

Shelves and showcase lighting is often used in shopping malls, supermarkets, shelves, showcases and frequently require high brightness to emphasize the products and stores on display. You would want to use high luminous efficiency and uniform illumination to eliminate unwanted dark spots. The new COB light strips on the market in the last two years can well meet this demand.

2.5 The Characteristics of the Smart Product Light Bar

The main feature of the light bar used in the smart product industry is to customize the relevant light according to the customer’s smart product features. This requires convenient cutting, good waterproof performance, and uniform color options.

2.6 The Characteristics of the Tunnel Light Strip

The tunnel light bar is mainly used for underground lighting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to ensure proper staff safety and work conditions. This means each element needs a very long life with high brightness. Generally, a high-voltage light bar is used for a roll of 100 meters without pressure drop.

2.7 The Characteristics of Photography lights, Makeup lights, High CRI Light Strips

Decorative lighting is used with photography lights, makeup lights, and high CRI light strips. The main feature is the high CRI, which is generally above 95 to emulate the color of the sun at 12 noon.

2.8 The Characteristics of the Plant Growing Lights

Growing lights provide a similar spectrum of color and to the sun, known as full spectrum. The goal is to simulate outdoor conditions from different colors, temperatures, and spectral output of lumens for each grow lamp. Depending on the type of plant being cultivated, the cultivation stage (such as the germination/vegetative period or the flowering period/fruiting period) and the photoperiod required by the plant, the specific range of the spectrum, the luminous efficiency, and the color temperature can be adjusted to fit the need of the project.

2.9 The Characteristics of Vehicle and Ship Light Bars

Yacht and ship lighting is used to outline the edges of vessels and often requires the lamp to be waterproof, dustproof, salt fog resistant, and provide various series of monochromatic light options.

3. The main points of the production of light strips in different scenarios.

3.1 Park, Landscape, Garden, Outdoor Tunnel Lighting & Outlining Buildings, Architecture, Linear and Arc Lightening.

These places use high-voltage light strips more than others. The production process of high-voltage light strips involves mounting lamp beads, reflow soldering, and glue injection packaging with three main steps. The two most important aspects that determine the quality of the high-voltage light bar are the quality of the lamp beads and the quality of the sealing glue. The lamp beads determine the service life and brightness of the lamp bar. The glue determines the yellowing resistance of the light bar. 

When used in a tunnel, the light bar needs to be lit for a long time with a small light decay. When the high-voltage light bar is used outdoors as a building contour hook line, the glue is required to have good UV protection characteristics and good resistance to yellowing. At present, the main high-voltage light bar manufacturers are concentrated in Shenzhen and Zhongshan. Among them, Shenzhen, China offers the highest quality, and Zhongshan provides the most affordable pricing.

3.2 Indoor Lighting for Hotels, Bedrooms, Kitchens, Lobbies, Public Areas, Furniture, Cabinets, Vehicles, and Ships.

These typically use 12V, 24V-based low-voltage strip lights. There are three main selections in the production process of low-voltage light bars:

• The thickness of the PCB board
• The size of the bead chip
• The quality of the glue. 

The thickness of the PCB board is referred to as the copper foil. The thicker the copper foil, the more current passes through, resulting in a smaller voltage drop. The size of the chip determines the brightness of the light bar to some extent, and a small current through a large enough chip can significantly enhance the life of the light bar. The main glues utilized include silica gel, PU glue, and mixed glue. Among them, the quality of silica gel is the best. The silica gel has good yellowing and salt corrosion resistance, so it is an excellent choice for outdoor lighting settings or vehicles like ships. 

In the past two years, LED strips have been reformed to produce cob strips. As the name suggests, it refers to a chip on board. It is characterized by dense chips and no light spots. It is best used in furniture, cabinets, kitchens, bedrooms, hotels, rooms, and other indoor lighting places. The main manufacturers are concentrated in China’s coastal cities such as Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhongshan, and Huizhou. The COB light bar was developed by a group of outstanding LED manufacturers in Bao’an District, Shenzhen, China.

3.3 Plant Growing Lights

Also known as full-spectrum light bars, these simulate natural light to replenish plants. After the new crown pneumonia outbreak in 2020, more and more consumers have demanded plant growth light bars. The use of vertical plant growth light bars has increased due to the ease of illuminating flowers, fruits, and vegetables on walls for higher yield growth. Many professional plant growth manufacturers are located in Shenzhen, China, Huizhou, Guangzhou, China, and other cities.

3.4 In Entertainment Venues, Bowling Alleys, Game Halls, Bars, and More.

Most often, the light bars used in these settings are magic light bars. These are divided according to IC model: WS2812, WS2813, SK6812, WS2811, P943, DMX512, HD108, etc. Different models are named by different packaging manufacturers. If used in entertainment venues, bowling alleys, game halls, bars, and other nightlife places, use WS2813 or SK 6813. Compared with WS2812, WS2813, they have the advantage of breakpoint and resuming transmission. It does not affect the entire light bar after a light is dead. If there are more requirements for animation, then a high-speed IC chip, such as HD108, must be used to ensure the continuity of the animation image. In the bar, if you need more personalization, you should link with the DMX512 console. You can use the DMX 512 light strip for animation while playing sounds or using the DJ effect according to music. Symphony light bars are mainly concentrated in Shenzhen, China.

3.5 Photography Lights, Makeup Lights, and High CRI Strip Lights

The main point of these lights is to recreate the natural light. Several dimensions are primarily considered in production: explicit index (RA); TLCI. Among them, the color rendering index has 15 colors, 15 color names:

• R1, light gray-red
• R2, dark gray-yellow
• R3: saturated yellow-green
• R4, medium yellow-green
• R5, light blue-green
• R6, light blue
• R7, light purple-blue
• R8, light reddish-purple
• R9, saturated red
• R10, saturated yellow
• R11, saturated green
• R12, saturated blue
• R13, white skin color
• R14, leaf green
• R15, yellow species human skin color. 

The average number of the previous 8 R1-R 8 is recorded as Ra, which is the general color rendering index (the color rendering index of the light source is usually Ra) to characterize the light source’s color rendering. R9 refers to saturated red and R12 refers to saturated blue.

In the light source application case, different lighting scenarios have different requirements for color rendering. A high Ra does not mean that the lighting effect must be good. For example, for film and TV commercials, fill light, TV studio lighting, photography lamps, and some special lighting scenes such as galleries, luxury goods, mahogany furniture, printing and dyeing factories involve a high color rendering index where the Ra is so high that it must reach 96 or 97 or more. At the same time, higher requirements are put forward for saturated red R9 and saturated blue R12, both of which must reach 90 or more to ensure that the light source has a high degree of reducibility for skin color and the natural for objects.

The pursuit of indicators for artificial light sources such as LEDs actually lean towards a spectrum as close as possible to natural light. This also improves the quality of LED light. At present, the best quality on the market is in Shenzhen, China. There are also some enterprises in some inland areas, such as Hangzhou, China.

The LED strip used will be different for different application sites. Choosing the right LED strip can not only illuminate and beautify the environment but also save operating costs. With the continuous expansion and application possibilities of light strips, the manufacturing and revolution of strip light are constantly advancing forward. This technology is an excellent addition to your home, office, building, and entertainment space. This is an excellent way to enhance the look and feel of your location while presenting an eco-friendly experience the world will appreciate.