LED lighting for "Shelf"

ChillaKilla · May 22, 2018

Hey there, small question hope you can help me,

I wanted to Light my "Showroom shelf" from my Stonemasons Shop.
The red lines in the Drawing should be where i want to place the lighting so each of the shelf compartment so that it is lit up from the top.

I dont really need too much RGB ( if this is only insignificantly more than a plain warm white, why not) i wanted to go up along the sieds, maybe the left side as this is close to a door and hidden more or less and then go from there into each compartment with sort of a "T junction" so the wires go up and the LEDs go into each compartment.

I was thinking about self sticking LED stripes that i can just tape to the underside or the Stone plates.

The thing i would need from you would be what parts do i need, Meassurements would be in the first Drawing ( in cm) should be about 6x 150 cm so about 9m of LED Stipes, and some conectors, do i need a Transformer if yes how much wattage? I live in Germany so we have 230V AC (i think its 50 Hz if thats necessary but im not a electrician just a Stonemason :D)

I would love it if u could maybe copy and paste me some amazon links ( €) if not, some tipps would be great and i think i should be abel to do / fine the rest myselve too)

Thanks in advance

Pictures are for your Understanding

Hackentosher · May 22, 2018

You'll need some LED strips off Ebay or the usual suspects for electronic components, and usually a 12v power supply. You wont need a very high power supply as LED strips typically don't draw too much current, even if you have a lot of them. 5 amps should be plenty. Solder up your supply to your LEDs, then connect as many as you need with some small wire.

For adhesion, the glue on LED strips is awful, they always fall off. I suggest pealing off the backing, and then gluing the strips to your surface with cyano acrylate (super glue) or some other strong adhesive.

Dujith · May 23, 2018

Another point is warmth, since they will be on the whole day they will start to heat up and become brittle quickly. This will also dramatically lower the livespan.

Best thing we noticed is to put them in an aluminum strip which cools it and has the benefit of having a diffuser.