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The rise of LED lighting has given birth to many new and ingenious ways of illuminating your home. LED strip lights are a prime example of this.

For so long now, halogen lights have been the industry standard for domestic and commercial lighting. They’ve also been fairly uncompromising in the way they work – you plug it in, and use it where your fitting is...and that’s it!

LED technology however allows for the diodes themselves to be mounted onto tape – opening up a whole new world of possibilities.

The tape itself is flexible, letting your bend it round corners and mount it on uneven surfaces – this is something that simple isn’t possible with conventional halogen bulbs, as the filament is too fragile.

LEDs though, use a semiconductor material, so there are no fragile parts. This gives you the added freedom to use them outside too – all you need to do is add IP65 rating protection so that it can withstand rain water and other foreign bodies.

On top of this, they also bring all the other benefits of LED lighting too.

This means they’ll save you a lot of money on your electricity bills – as they use up to 90% less energy than halogen lighting, and up to 40% less than compact fluorescent lights (CFLs).

They’re able to do this because of their incredible efficiency. LEDs lose just 10% of their total energy to heat wastage, whereas halogen bulbs lose a whopping 80% to heat!

With less heat passing through the internal components, they also last much longer – most of our LED strip lights will keep going for up to 50,000 hours! That goes for all of our other LED bulbs too!

In comparison, this is 2 times longer than CFLs, and 20 times longer than halogen bulbs.

So not only do our LED strip lights provide incredible versatility, they also boast excellent performance.

But where can you use them? The great thing is that you can be really creative, and use them pretty much anywhere! They are better suited to create ambient lighting that compliments your existing lighting, rather than for actual illumination.

A great example can be seen in the image to the left, where some LED strip light has been used to line the edge of a kitchen worktop, creating a wash of light down the set of drawers.

While this won’t light up your whole kitchen, it will add a really modern touch.

Staying in the kitchen, a similar effect can be achieved using LED strip lights underneath your cabinets. Not only does this give you some great ambient lighting, but it also serves as task lighting for when you’re cooking and preparing food.

Wherever you do decide to use them, we’d also really recommend using an aluminium profile, as it acts as a heat sink, and extends the life of your strips by up to 50%.

Using a frosted diffuser will give you a different effect too, spreading the light more evenly, creating more of a washed effect.

It’s fair to say that your imagination is the limit when it comes to LED strip lights. The ambiance and effects that are possible are unprecedented in the lighting industry, giving you the chance to really take your domestic light setup to the next level.

If you have any questions about LED strip lights, give our team a call on 0116 321 4120, or send us an email to cs@wled.co.uk.

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