Your home decor, furniture, plants, and many others affect your home ambiance. But the easiest way to improve that is through your lighting. Light bulbs are great, but some products are much better at this job. That would be the LED light strips. Compared to light bulbs, these lighting devices are more flexible. And we mean that they are literally flexible. You can put these bendable circuit boards almost anywhere you want. Additionally, like smart light bulbs, LED light strips to come in various colors. So, you can use them to give a room the exact ambiance you want it to have.
You have lots of options in the market. Of course, choosing high-quality ones over cheap ones is highly recommended. Quality LED light strips would outlive the cheaper options. So, you can save money by opting for them even though they seem more expensive at first glance.
The question is, how can you know if the LED light strip is high-quality or not? Let us help you with that. Here are four things you should look for when selecting LED light strips for your home:
Distance Between the LED Chips And How Many Are There
The first thing you should check in a LED strip is the number of LED chips it contains. Also, check how far apart the LED chips are. Why? Because these factors affect the brightness that the LED light strips provide.
Cheaper LED light strips do have fewer LED chips and are more sparingly placed. As a result, they are not naturally luminous. To compensate, they artificially increase the luminosity using LEDs supplied with higher amperage. The problem with that is it shortens the lifespan of the LED. And so, it would only take some time before you need to buy new LED strips.
The thickness of Copper Tracks
LED strips have a conductor track that connects and powers each LED chip. The said track is made of copper, and copper is not cheap. And so, manufacturers of cheap LED light strips save money by reducing the amount of copper they use. Consequently, their LED strips have a thinner conducting track. That leads to poor heat dissipation, which affects the LED strips negatively.
That said, when buying LED light strips for your smart home, look for ones with thicker copper tracks. That indicates that they are much more durable than the others.
Resistors
The size of the resistors also affects the lifespan of the LED strips. Cheap ones are equipped with smaller resistors. That puts an additional burden on the LED chips. Therefore, they fail much earlier.
On the other hand, high-quality LED light strips feature resistors of the appropriate size. Thus, the LED strip is longer lasting and offers better luminosity.
Coating
One look at LED light strips, and you can quickly see if they are high quality. The cheap LED light strip would likely have cracks along its length. That’s what happens when they have a cheap, brittle coating. You should not buy those not just because they look awful. They also are not safe to use because of the exposed parts.
Also, consider checking the IP rating of the LED light strip. It determines how protected they are from different elements. That will help you select the LED light strip best-suited to where you want to put it.
High-quality LED light strips do have a higher IP rating than the cheaper options.
Smart LED Light Strips
LED light strips allow you to light up the underside of kitchen cabinets and other places where light bulbs would not fit in. They also allow you to add mood to hallway baseboards, stairs, and such.
Ordinary LED light strips do work just fine. But why stop with that when you can opt for smart LED light strips? These are smart home devices, meaning you can control them using a mobile app or voice assistant. You can adjust their brightness and color or turn the light strips on or off.
Where can you find these LED light strips? And which one should you get? Here are a few recommendations.
LIFX Light Strip Color Zone
This smart LED light strip is 1,400 lumens. Admittedly, that’s not something that would wow you. But it’s enough to light up a room. Even at only 30% brightness, this LED strip can illuminate a dark room.
One of the best things about these RGBW LED lights is that they are compatible with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple HomeKit. So, it can fit in many smart home ecosystems.
The LIFX Light Stip Color Zone features 8 different color zones. You can set a different color for each zone. And since you have millions of color options, you can get creative.
Philips Hue Bluetooth Smart Lightstrip Plus
Philips Hue and high-quality smart light bulbs are almost synonymous now. So, it’s not surprising that the company also makes great LED light strips.
The Philips Hue Bluetooth Smart Lightstrip Plus offers 1,600 lumens. It is one of the brightest in the market. Like the other smart light strips, you can set it to one of 16 million colors.
The best thing about this light strip is that you can reuse and reconnect cut segments to other portions of the strip using the Philip Hue connector.
This LED light strip works with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple HomeKit, Microsoft Cortana, SmartThings, and IFTTT. However, it requires you to have a Hue Hub to unlock all of its features. So unless you are already in the Hue ecosystem, this will forever be a secondary choice.
TP-Link Kasa Smart Light Strip
The TP-link Kasa Smart Light Strip is very easy to install and use. It does not require a hub and works with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. Using the Kasa app, you can set animated lighting effects, scenes, and scheduling to this strip using the app. Furthermore, you can group your LED light strip with your other Kasa smart lights.
The only negative thing one can say about this smart LED light strip is it is not that bendable – but it’s not impossible to bend. So, it is best suited for straight lines. Aside from that, there’s nothing.
So, this is one of the best smart LED light strips you can get.