Thursday, March 24, 2011

LED undercabinet lights

I had blogged previously about my preference for LED lights over CFLs.  Our house is finally starting to reflect that preference.

For our undercabinet lights we installed strip LEDs from LED Lights Canada.  We had looked originally for off the shelf options from the likes of Rona and Home Depot but weren't satisfied with the light output. LED Lights Canada has these ones custom made for them.  The result: 400 lumens per metre on 10 watts.
Custom cut LED strip for smallest cabinet

Installation was a breeze and the light quality and brightness is excellent.  We also had friends comment on how cool they run compared to their halogen lights.  You can run them all day and they will be only slightly warm to the touch so they don't heat up all your food being stored in the cabinet above.

Our only issue is that I had anticipated having off-the-shelf lights which would plug in.  So I wired one switch controlling three outlets. The strips we did buy have no built in driver.  LEDs use 12V power not 120V (which is why they work so well for battery powered flashlights).  So when hooking into your home power they need the power converted using a driver.  Replacement LED bulbs have that driver built in.  These didn't.  It is not a big deal, it just means that you need to buy a separate driver or in this case because of how I wired things up ... three drivers which pushed the price up.

I also need to give huge props to Harvey Hoffman (LED Lights Canada's owner/president) for the excellent customer service.  Sent him a long winded email and I got an immediate phone call with him walking me through the easiest and cheapest way to do my set up.  He custom cut all the strips to fit my cabinets and when I couldn't find the mounting clips with my order (I probably threw them out with the packaging) he mailed new ones the next day no questions asked.

Excellent product, excellent service, hopefully this Edmonton based company will do well.  I take the fact that they are sold out of the cabinet strips until next week's shipment as a positive sign of their success.

7 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. nice blog to read about ( LED undercabinet lights ) i like it and i also wanna thank you for sharing it with us led cabinet lights

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  3. I'm slowing converting all the lights in my house to LED, it's definitely worth doing.

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  4. This is a good one! I really like it. Thank you so much for sharing. LED is indeed a trend now a days.

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  5. Awesome piece! I like how you have compiled and presented everything.

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  6. Hi dude,

    I found your blog here. All post is really helpful.ice to read.Because your blog is really attractive. Thanks for your creative activities.There are thousands of online retailers that sell LED puck lights for LED cabinet lighting. However, you will be very careful when you decide to buy them online as there are many fraud sites out there as well. You should only purchase them from a reputed online store that has been in the market for a while.Look forward to learn more about: led cabinet light

    Regards
    SK


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