Ambient light is defined as the general illumination within a space. The availability of ambient light throughout the home is one of the most critical considerations in interior design. With LED strip lights, there are many more ways to effectively create ambient light to brighten the home for family and guests. Strip lights capitalize on the well-known benefits of LED technology – providing ample, beautiful light with low energy costs and incredible durability. But there is another important factor exclusive to strip lights, and that is their supreme design versatility. Our strips can be cut, curved and connected to fit any space and shine light exactly where you want it. Here are four ways to create attractive ambient light with LED strips: Indirect Light One of the best uses for LED strip lights is in indirect lighting projects. Indirect lighting is a great way to add focus, texture, layering and accent color to rooms throughout the house. Many people choose to run the strips above cabinets in the kitchen, behind mirrors in the bathroom, or in coves through hallways. Modern designers have expressed a preference for indirect lighting because of the way it hides fixtures and because it produces an evenly distributed glow of ambient light throughout the room. Pro Tip: Take extra care to make sure the high energy areas of your house have ample lighting. Where does the family gather? In the kitchen or the living room? Make sure that the lights you install are bright enough to energize a crowd, making everyone feel lively and excited to be together. Our LED strips are some of the very brightest LEDs you will find on the market. Task Lighting Ambient light in a room is not only measured by how attractive it is, but also by its functionality. One advantage of LED strips is that their versatility makes them great for task lighting installations. LED strip lights are perhaps the best solution there is for under cabinet lighting — a common example of home-based task lighting. Further, this is a simple DIY project that won’t require a huge electrician expense. To add kitchen task lighting, just peel back the adhesive on the back of our strips, stick them under the cabinet and connect them to a power source for incredible kitchen task lighting. Pro Tip: When installing task lighting, it’s a good idea to put in more light than you think you’ll need. First, these lights will last many years into the future, and who couldn’t use more light as the years go on? Second, when you’re focusing on a task, more light means better concentration and improved accuracy. Dimmers Dimmers are important for creating the right ambient light atmosphere in the home. With dimmers, you can turn down the lights as night falls, which will relax your mind and bring you closer to sleep. Dimmers can also be used to add light to a room where natural light normally enters, but perhaps clouds are letting in less light than normal and you need a little extra. With a dimmed LED strip lights, you will have full control to add the perfect level of light necessary for any given situation. Pro tip: Before you add a dimmable LED strip lighting system, it is a good idea to consider whether you want a hardwired wall dimmer or a remote inline dimmer. The latter option is easier if you have a professional electrician on hand, while the second option can be done as part of a DIY installation. Accent Light LED strip lights can also improve a room’s ambient light by adding accent. Running strips along toe kickers or under counters is a great way to add color or textures to a room. With LED strips, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination. If you’re looking to add an extra creative flair, add color-changing RGBs and harness the power of color psychology. For instance, say...
LED Display Lighting At Tanner Goods
posted by Flexfire LEDs
Flexfire LEDs is proud to have been part of many successful LED display lighting projects. In a recent installation, our ColorBright LED strip lights were installed at a Tanner Goods retail store in Los Angeles, CA. Tanner Goods is a well-known producer of high quality leather goods and accessories that are crafted by hand in Portland, OR, using premium domestic materials. The management team at Tanner Goods found Flexfire LEDs when searching for a tasteful way to illuminate their products, which previously had been cast under shadow. They chose LED strip lights because of their low profile and relatively straightforward installation procedure. Attractive display lighting has been shown to play a critical role in bringing customers into a store and encouraging them to make a purchase. A study published by the International Journal of Engineering Science and Innovative Technology showed that 85% of customers sampled felt that attractive colors and lighting increased the likelihood that they would want to spend more time in a store. Respondents said that effective lighting in particular helped them to “select the right products, reduce the time wasted and to feel relaxed” during their shopping experience. Tanner Goods’ choice of warm white LED lighting brings out the rich orange, red and brown hues found in their leather product selection. Such high quality light also creates a more inviting atmosphere for customers entering the store, allowing them to relax and take their time while browsing or looking for a particular product. “Using LEDs to illuminate our shelving allowed us to highlight our products in an effective and subtle way,” said Tanner Goods store manager Alex Toyoshima. “The Flexfire LEDs team has also provided great customer service and was quick to help whenever we were in need.” Here are a few photos from the installation: We truly enjoy the opportunity to provide clients with the LED solutions they need. It’s really a great pleasure for us to see our strip lights installed in the countless innovative and sustainable projects that are developed with our lights every single day. Your vision is what inspires us to do what we do! Do you need any help deciding which LED strip lights are right for your commercial, industrial, or home renovation project? Give us a call at 1-844-FLEXFIRE (1-844-353-9347) or shoot us an email to info@flexfireleds.com and we’d love to get...
Program LED Strip Lights To Save Money...
posted by Flexfire LEDs
Installing LED lights in your business, warehouse or home is the first step toward realizing a dramatically lower lighting bill. The next step is to program LED strip lights to connect with occupancy sensors, timers and smart controls to maximize the greatest savings possible. As demand for green technology and efficient use of resources continues to grow, networked LED lights have become a crucial component in the modern energy retrofit. Energy efficiency investments could total $959 billion from 2014 to 2023, according to forecasts by Navigant Research. One thing is for sure: when it comes to effective ways to save energy on your lighting bill, LED-based lighting systems are impossible to beat. To start with, LEDs are incredibly efficient. Thomas Edison’s incandescent lightbulb, which brought electric light to the 20th century, produces just 16 lumens per watt. In comparison, most commercially available LEDs produce anywhere from 60 to 100 lumens per watt. But the efficiency of LED technology doesn’t end at the diode; its ultimate energy-saving superiority lies in its advanced control capabilities. Using LED-based automated systems, lights can be programmed to turn on and off automatically when people enter a room. Further, dimming and other advanced features can be controlled externally via smartphones or software connected to the internet. This networked management is possible because LEDs can be switched off and on digitally, and can easily be finely adjusted for both brightness and color temperature. Highly advanced LED-based lights can even be tuned to correspond to natural sunlight entering the room in a method of lighting known as daylight harvesting. Advanced daylight harvesting uses sunlight entering a room from windows and skylights and adjusts the LED lighting system to automatically add the necessary light to meet the room’s predetermined brightness level. Changing to LED lighting...
Benefits Of The LED Color Spectrum
posted by Flexfire LEDs
LEDs are more energy efficient. LEDs last longer. These claims are becoming more and more prevalent, and rightfully so. But this breakthrough light source represents another tremendous advantage, one that is far less well known: the LED color spectrum. The “white” visible light emitted naturally by both the sun and artificial light sources is actually composed of a range of colors. These various colors can be viewed when the light is refracted through a dispersive prism. The different colors of light represent different wavelength frequencies — the typical human eye can perceive wavelengths from about 390 to 700 nm. While sunlight is composed of the richest compilation of color (within it you will see all the colors of the rainbow), many other forms of artificial “white” light are missing wide swaths of the color spectrum. Looking at the color distribution of incandescent (top) and CFLs (bottom) in the charts below, we see that there are large sections of the full spectrum missing from each of these forms of white light. In incandescents, the lower wavelengths of blue, green all the way to yellow are found at a greatly diminished value. In CFLs, on the other hand, the apparent white light is something like a visual trick, composing narrow bands of violet, blue, green and orange color frequencies to trick our brains into thinking we’re seeing white light. Below is the color spectrum found in LEDs. Notice how the LED color spectrum is heavier on the blues, and claims a more even distribution than CFLs or red heavy incandescents. The reason for this is that many LEDs are run using more efficient blue chips which shines through a phosphor coating that turn the light white. So what’s the difference between the LED color spectrum and the spectrum found in other artificial light sources? The main difference is that the LED spectrum is closer to natural daylight than incandescents, which more closely resemble sunset light, or CFLs, which are composed of narrow bands of light. The color spectrum of LED lights signal to our body’s internal circadian rhythm, a critical player in cognition and mood, that we are in a daylight situation. This makes us feel more alert, in addition to helping fight symptoms of depression. In contrast, incandescents, heavy on the red spectrum, can actually decrease alertness and increase fatigue. Interestingly, the LED color spectrum has also proven beneficial in poultry LED lighting. Chickens raised under LED lights were found to respond positively to the LED color spectrum, which enhanced growth rates while reducing food costs and increasing the amount of eggs per chicken. Furthermore, the LED color spectrum has led to great results for indoor gardeners and horticulturists. Up until now, we have only covered one way to make white LED light — a blue LED light shone through phosphor. Another method is known as RGB, which blends red, green and blue LEDs together into white. While a less developed technology than phosphor-based white LEDs, RGB-based LEDs have the advantage of increasing the dynamism of the LED color spectrum. By using remote-controlled color-changing RGBs, the LED color spectrum can be adjusted to change at different times of the day or for various situations at home or work. Any Questions? Inspired to learn more about LED lights? We’d love to lend a hand and discuss LED strip lighting possibilities whenever you’re ready. Contact: Phone: 1-844-FLEXFIRE (1-844-353-9347) Email: info@flexfireleds.com Website: flexfireleds.com ...
Visual Light Communication And Customer Engagement...
posted by Flexfire LEDs
With the rise of the smartphone and ubiquitous internet connectivity, retailers have found themselves on the hunt for new ways to interact with their guests. One of the most promising of these is LED-based Visual light Communication (VLC), which gives retailers a powerful in-store tool to engage with customers. The opportunity to harness the power of VLC (also known as Li-Fi) is another great reason for retailers to make the switch to LEDs. LED technology makes VLC possible because of the extremely fast rate at which the chips can be switched from on to off, and vice versa. This rapid fire switching means LED lighting systems can be modulated with computer chips to convey data at such a fast rate that the human eye won’t even perceive a flicker in the constant white light used to light the store. The LED lights communicate with the camera lens of mobile devices. Shoppers in the store will opt in to “listen” to the VLC-based communications, supplying the store with extremely accurate location data similar to GPS, but it works indoors and its accuracy rate is within centimeters. The store could then use the data to provide location-based services or personalized content to shoppers as they browse the aisles. The technology could also be used to serve as a navigation device in airports and museums. Already the Museum of Science in Boston is featuring the first pilot project by ByteLight, a startup that uses LED lighting equipped with chips and software to provide visitor locations and promote interactive learning. The LED system uses VLC to communicate with iPad cameras to create a richer experience, and to provide a fuller breadth of information for the exhibit which pertains to how digital technology is affecting our lives. While traditional technologies such as signs...