Ridiculously Easy DIY Light Strips! (no soldering)

i want to change my bathroom from this to this the problem is i want it to not cost a lot be high quality and be easy i mean is that even possible well after trying out many different options and almost failing multiple times i finally found a great solution seriously anyone can do this because there's no soldering required and the results are amazing let me show you what i did all right so these are my requirements for putting light strips under my cabinets in the bathroom so i thought about using something like hue lifx or casa because i really like those light strips but since i need to have special requirements for this bathroom i decided not to use those and the reason why is that there's an outlet in the middle and so i'm gonna have to go in two different directions and if i was using one of those light strips it would be really expensive to either use two or really complicated to do that with those so i'm have to figure out another way to do that my other requirement is that it has really good warm and cool whites because i'm mainly going to have the lights white in the bathroom but i also want to have rgb colors for automations and i'm going to be doing a video for a tour in my bathroom showing some automations using these light strips so make sure you're following the channel to not miss out on that video the other thing is our cabinets are fairly new so i don't want to drill holes in them to hide the wires maybe that's just because i have a problem committing to things what was that you're afraid of commitment no no i'm talking about the light strips and the cabinets not you well now i need to figure out how to fix that and how to hide the wires now that i know what i need it's time to go shopping on amazon there's three things that are really important a roll of light strips a controller and a power source and you purchase all of these things separately unlike something like phillips hue light strips and to connect all this it's really simple even though it kind of looks a little scary the role of light strips has six wires sticking out of it one for each color a separate one for each white a warm and cool and a power source the only reason you need to know that is so you can know where to plug that in into the controller but it's pretty intuitive like r stands for red b stands for blue and you just use a screwdriver to press down on the connector to insert the wire then you plug in the power source and that's it the light strips work it's pretty simple now that the light strips are working i need a few accessories to complete this project one is a roll of wire that will allow you to connect the light strips to a power source or more light strips over a gap then there's some little connector clamps and these are really useful because you can plug the wires in and they clamp onto the light strip so you don't need to do any kind of soldering to connect these two there's also some right angle connectors that are optional because you can use a small amount of that wire to make a right angle now to hide all this mess i have a box that i'm going to put the power supply and controller in and some wire covers to hide the wires the last thing i'm going to be using is channel covers which are completely optional they have a few benefits though they help the light strips from falling down since they mount inside of this aluminum channel that's nice and smooth compared to mounting it straight to the cabinets and then they just snap right into the bracket so they stay nice and secure there's also a cover that helps to fuse the light that just makes it look a little softer and nicer to look at all right before i install these light strips i want to set them next to my philips hue light strips and see if they're in the same league because many of the amazon comments were saying that they're better and they're less expensive so i was like yeah sure let's try them out they both have a warm and cool white i set them next to it looked at the phillips hue and those ones look great and then i looked at these ones and oh man they look terrible i turned on the white color and it was like a bluish purple color i mean there's no way i would be able to put these in my bathroom so i'm in full on panic mode because i'm about to install these light strips i went on amazon and i ordered some more light strips and these are very similar from a different company but the warm and cool whites look so good and those little warm and cool white leds are right next to the rgb led which i actually prefer because they're spaced out a little bit better and the colors and everything are really saturated and they look great so i know i can connect one light strip into the controller but i want to be able to split the light strips in two different directions so i was wondering if i can connect two light strips into the controller and it turns out you can you just twist together the same wires from each light strip so the reds the power the blue the green and then you just insert those two wires into each controller slot i'm glad this works because i thought i would need a splitter to make the light strips go into two different directions and this is much easier so i measured everything cut the light strips to size where they're allowed to be cut and then i added those connector clamps and i just used some pliers to really clamp them down tight and they stay super secure for the right angle connectors the light strips slide underneath the pins and then you just snap them closed it's pretty simple okay so now that everything's working it's time to install the light strips since i'm using channel covers i need to first screw in the brackets and this turns out to be very difficult when you have such low clearance to the ground i was trying to use a little bit and there was no screwdriver that really worked there could be a better way of doing this but i used the best that i had and after struggling for a long time i finally got them all screwed in whenever you're installing light strips make sure to clean off the surface with rubbing alcohol i'm using a microfiber cloth with some rubbing alcohol cleaned off the channel cover and installed the light strips so it's a nice secure bond and they won't fall off then i just snapped on the cover and put the channel covers into the brackets and that part's easy now i got to hide all of these wires the problem is this little wire connector is too thick and it doesn't fit in those wire covers so i don't even know what i'm going to do maybe use some bigger wire covers wow the light strips are looking really nice thanks yeah i try to hide the wires really well oh actually i don't really like that part you see how it's like it's sticking out in the front well it's really hard to know it's like an eyesore what ah looks like i need a better solution and i can do that with two different things one i can move that wire connector off to the side next to the light strip so it doesn't need to go into that wire cover and then i can spray paint the wire covers to match the cabinets and it only took about two hours for the spray paint to dry and it looks so much better all right legally i'm obligated to say this that my wife is right yeah i said it i'm not gonna say it again for a while but it does look so much better with the wire covers painted to match the cabinets and i think all the light strips they look so good the warm the cool whites it just looks amazing in this bathroom and this is really helpful for us because if we're getting up to go to the bathroom late at night we don't want the bright lights even at a dim setting in our eyes so the light strips are perfect for this since they're automated with this motion sensor here in the bathroom all right before you comment and say you don't like that box down there we're gonna put a vanity chair that's gonna cover that up so you're not gonna see it at all and i'm really glad i did this project i've never really used these types of light strips in the past because they've always seemed a little too complicated but it's actually not too bad especially if you can avoid some of the things i ran into like buying the right light strips in the first place so i'll link everything down in the description thanks for watching i like it right oh thanks but it's actually an automation to warn everyone that i just went to the bathroom [Music]

Channel: Smart Home Solver

Views: 900,259

Keywords: diy light strips, diy led strips, easy diy light strips, easy led light strips, wiring light strips, light strips channel cover, how to set up light strips, how to cut LED strips, how to connect light strips, under cabinet lighting, under cabinet led light strip, smart home, home automation, smart home solver

Id: zFW94lpUrTI

Length: 8min 34sec (514 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 12 2022