I have been giving my son’s bedroom a bit of a refresh for a few weeks now. One of his requests for his updated room was to have LED strips on the ceiling. I am no electrician, and I didn’t know how to install LED strip lights on the ceiling. However having done a bit of research I felt that this should be a relatively inexpensive and simple DIY task that I could do myself. So I decided to give it a go.
Deciding Which LED Strip Lights to Use
Having looked into it a little I realised that there were all kinds of strip lights out there – for all sorts of situations! However, I also quickly realised that I could probably get a ‘plug and play’ set of LED strip lights that I could install on the ceiling, from Amazon. Having measured and worked out the length of lights required, I ordered these strip lights:
I chose these as they come with a remote control, but also work with Alexa and with an App. They have many different modes, such as night time, ‘dancing’, etc. They were also a really reasonable price!
Setting the Lights Up
So this is what came in the kit:
Setting them up couldn’t have been simpler. I simply plugged the power supply in and connected it to the manual controller (the white box below). I attached the manual controller to the wall with some double sided tape. Next I took the reel of LED lights and unravelled it a little. The end of the lights had a connector which connects to the manual controller.
How to Install the LED Strip Lights On The Ceiling
The LED lights have adhesive tape on the back and so installing them onto the ceiling was simply a case of removing the backing tape and pressing the lights down in the location that I wanted. I actually ran them up the wall from the connector and onto the ceiling. The LED light tape stuck to the ceiling very easily.
How to Take the LED Lights Around A Corner
Every few centimetres there was a metal section in the light strip (pictured below). This is the area where the lights can be cut and re-connected. You simply snip across the middle of this section.
When I got close to the corner of the room, I snipped the lights on the metal section closest to the corner. Next, within the light kit, were corner pieces, to allow you to turn the LED lights through 90 degrees on the ceiling (pictured below).
I simply opened up the catches on each corner and pushed the metal section of the end of the tape I had just cut under the contacts within the corner piece.
Next I took the other end of the tape that I had cut and pushed the metal parts of this under the other contacts in the other corner. I was now ready to carry on installing the LED Lights on the ceiling along the next part of the room. I turned the lights on to check they were working before carrying on. I attached the corner piece with some double sided tape supplied in the kit.
I carried on in this way until I had installed the LED lights right around the ceiling of the room.
I will say that one of the downsides of the kit I used was that the metal cut sections were relatively far apart. I therefore wasn’t able to keep the LED lights going right to the corners of the room as I would otherwise have wanted.
Connecting to the App
After downloading the app, I was able to connect the lights – I have to say this might have been easier to have done before applying them to the ceiling. It was trickier to get a good connection with them already in place! However we did manage it and my son was soon playing with all the different modes and options!
Things to Improve On Next Time
My son is delighted with how the lights look and work in his bedroom, however if I were to install the LED lights on the ceiling again, I might do it a bit differently. For instance, I could have used diffuser strips, that you can feed the LED lights through and they give a more uniform glow – more like a neon light. There are also special types of coving you can buy, which hide the LED strip lights discretely within it, whilst still letting it shine. As my son’s bedroom already had coving, I didn’t want to take this down just for the LED lights.
Overall installing the LED lights on the ceiling was super-quick and easy – and it provides a brilliant effect!
