Starscape’s Janet Dunn took the opportunity to install colour changing RGB LEDs into coving around the living room, hall ,bedroom and bathroom. To conceal the LEDs Janet suggested using white plastic channel to house the LED tape.
Components necessary for this particular installation. Plaster or Polystyrene coving, plastic channel,
RGB tape, controller and power supply. Not shown: instant grab coving adhesive or Power Expansion Modules (signal boosters).
Measure the depth of the coving.
The lower position is marked on the wall right around the room.
Apply the adhesive .. and fix the channel.
Apply the adhesive to the coving…and fix the coving
Cutting the mitre
An opening was left at the start of the LED run for
cable connection.
Self-adhesive backing makes fixing the tape in position a simple job.
At this stage the coving and channel were finished with flexible filler and lightly sanded.
The hall, bathroom and bedroom had similar treatment but using warm white tape.
The hall below is almost at daylight light levels when the tape is lit.
The L shaped hall is 9 metres long in total and required 16 metres of 12v warm white tape.
The load is only 117 watts.
The camera exaggerates the glow from the tape. In reality, the “hot spot” is far less apparent than this photo suggests,
and the light distribution much more even.
BATHROOM
As the bathroom was fully tiled, Janet decided not to use coving.
Instead, she created a projection around the top of the room using plasterboard strips and fixed the plastic channel under this.
Tiles were then cut at a length to hide the plasterboard and channel. A very pleasing effect.
Inserting waterproof LED tape into the channel under the projection.
Again, the light is actually distributed far more evenly down the wall than the photo suggests.
The Star ceiling in the bathroom.
The ceiling contains over 500 stars although this photo does not do it justice as some of the stars on the dim cycle of the twinkle are not showing.
The bathroom is 4.5m x 2m giving a star density of 55 per square metre.
We would normally recommend star densities anywhere between 20 and 60 per square metre for a good natural looking star field.
The higher the star density, the more of a natural starry sky effect can be achieved, but at lower densities you can still have very nice mood lighting effects.
