For years, we’ve known about the advantages of LED lighting: lower energy consumption and longer life. Many of us have been compelled to switch solely to LED and even smart bulbs as a result of these factors. However, LED lighting isn’t limited to light bulbs: LED strip lights are one of the finest ways to enhance everything from your gaming PC to your kitchen cupboards, and they’ve come a long way since their inception.
There’s something for everyone in the world of LED strips, whether you’re seeking simple, energy-efficient lighting to save money or voice-controlled disco lights that coordinate with your music. These are our favorite LED strip lights, ranging from basic and classy to over-the-top customizable – and click here to find them in the UK.
TL;DR — These are the Best LED Strip Lights
- Philips Hue Bluetooth Smart Lightstrip Plus
- Wyze Light Strip Pro
- Corsair iCUE Lighting Node PRO RGB Lighting Controller
- Elgato Light Strip
- Corsair LS100 Smart Lighting Kit Starter Kit
- Govee Wi-Fi TV Backlights Kit with Camera
- Maxonar Wi-Fi Enabled LED Strip Lights
- Nanoleaf Shapes Hexagon Smarter Kit
- Nanoleaf Essentials Lightstrips
- Ikea Myrvarv
- Twinkly Flex
1. Philips Hue Bluetooth Smart Lightstrip Plus
Best LED Strip Lights
Lumens: 1600 | Color: Adjustable White and RGB | Wattage: 19 watts | Length: 6.7-feet | Extendable: Yes | Smart Home: Yes | Warranty: 2-year
Philips Hue products are at the forefront of smart lighting, and the company hasn’t shied away from entering the LED lightstrip industry. The Philips Hue Bluetooth Smart Lightstrip Plus exemplifies Philips’ lighting expertise. This lightstrip has a starting span of little over 6.5 feet, but you can extend it to a total of 33 feet by adding extra 40-inch extension strips.
The strip can produce up to 1600 lumens of light, giving you enough of brightness while still allowing you to dim it as needed. Not only do you receive full RGB color, but you also get customizable white lighting. You can start your day with a brilliant white, then enjoy some color throughout the day before retiring to a warm white for the evening. Because this lightstrip is controlled over Bluetooth, you won’t have to pay for a Philips Hue Hub like you would with many other items, however, you can add one to your setup later if you want even greater smart home integration for the strip.
2. Wyze Light Strip Pro
Best Budget LED Strip Lights
LEDs: 150 (each color) | Color: RGB | Wattage: 24 watts | Length: 16.4-feet | Extendable: No | Smart Home: Yes
For a more cheap light strip, the Wyze Light Strip Pro provides an unexpected level of control. It may not have as refined a color palette as a light strip with RGB and separate white LEDs for different color temperatures, but it does remove some of the guesswork out of getting your ambient lighting exactly right by automatically altering the color temperature for the time of day. That’s already outstanding for a strip this cheap, but Wyze ups the ante by dividing the strip into 16 segments, each of which can be controlled independently, allowing you to have different colors running simultaneously throughout the strip.
With the Wyze Light Strip Pro, you’ll also have easy control. At this price, some budget strips could offer simple Bluetooth control or a rudimentary remote control, but Wyze features a Wi-Fi-connected controller, allowing you to control your lights from home or anywhere else you can connect to the internet using the Wyze app. You may also use Google Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa to control the lights.
3. Corsair iCUE Lighting Node
Best LED Strip Lights for PC
LEDs: 10 per strip, 40 total | Color: RGB | Length: 410mm | Extendable: Yes | Smart Home: No | Warranty: 2-year
Corsair is the undisputed king of RGB lighting in the gaming PC world. The Lighting Node Pro RGB Controller, which can also operate Corsair’s RGB case fans, is included in this kit, as well as a set of four lighting strips. They also work with the company’s iCUE software, which is proprietary.
iCUE gives you greater control over the lighting in your case than almost any other system. You can control each individual LED with the program and assign a wide range of presets, effects, and animations. These LED strips can sync up with other Corsair gear, such as PC fans or a gaming keyboard, for easy matching and even broadcast animations across your devices.
4. Elgato Light Strip
Best LED Strip Lights for Streaming
It was just a matter of time until Corsair provided RGB lighting outside of the PC, and their revolutionary LS100 Smart Lighting Starter Kit has made quite a splash. A diffuser is included into every LS100 lighting strip for smooth, flowing RGB lighting. Most significantly, you can use this kit on the back of a monitor or in any custom configuration you like with the software, making it a perfect fit (and length!) for the back of a desk.
You can choose from a variety of preset lighting effects or build your own animations with Corsair’s iCUE software. You can even sample your screen for amazing bias lighting when using it as a monitor lighting kit. Because of the diffusers built in, these light strips aren’t the brightest, but the level of customisation and versatility is hard to top.
6. Govee WiFi TV LED Backlights
Best LED Strip Lights for Your TV
Wattage: 24 watts | LEDs: 114 | Color: RGB | Length: 12.5-feet | Television Size: 55-65-inch | Smart Home: Yes
For a variety of reasons, bias lighting is appealing. It’s beneficial for your eyes, for starters. It can be difficult to see a bright screen in a dark room, so getting some light behind the screen can assist. You get some great bias lighting for your TV with the Govee Wi-Fi TV LED Backlights. This light strip adds to the visual experience of whatever you’re watching by not simply splashing a solid color behind your TV, but also by providing extremely dynamic lighting.
The 12.5-foot light strip from Govee mounts to the back of your TV and uses 114 RGB LEDs in a multitude of individually programmable zones to create a light show behind your TV. The light strip can react to whatever is broadcast thanks to the accompanying camera, which is connected to your TV and calibrated to your screen, allowing the mood of a scene to extend around the room. If the screen is blank but you still want a dynamic light show, use the Music Sync option to have lighting changes that respond to music. Because the arrangement is Wi-Fi enabled, you also receive standard smart home controls.
7. Maxonar Wi-Fi Enabled LED Strip Lights
Best LED Strip Lights for Your Room
LEDs: 600 | Color: RGB | Wattage: 40 watts | Length: 32.8-feet (x2 16.4ft rolls) | Extendable: No | IP Rating: IP65 | Smart Home: Yes | Warranty: 18-month
LED lighting may improve the appearance of any room. Maxonar’s kit includes two 16.4-foot rolls, each with double the number of LEDs as competitor companies, for a total of 600 emitters. It also includes a complete DIY kit for cutting, connecting, and extending these strips to your exact specifications. This kit will provide the brightness and customizability you require, whether you’re illuminating a display cabinet or adding mood lighting to an entire area.
Because mood and accent lights interact with the rest of your room’s lighting, smart home compatibility is more vital than ever. These strips, thankfully, are Wi-Fi enabled and will interact with Amazon Alexa and Google Home, as well as internet platforms like IFTTT.
8. Nanoleaf Shapes Hexagon Smarter Kit
Best LED Strip Accent Lighting
Lumens: 100 | Color: Adjustable White and RGB | Wattage: 2 watts (per panel) | Length: 7.75-inches (per panel) | Extendable: Yes | Smart Home: Yes | Warranty: 2-year
The Nanoleaf Shapes Hexagon Smarter Kit is an excellent way to get started with an LED strip accent light because it does not limit you to a single strip. Nanoleaf’s forms are made to stand out, providing a fashionable, light-up piece of art for your walls, rather than being just a long row of LEDs that can only really fit on a corner or tuck away somewhere. The Shapes Hexagon Smarter Kit comes with seven panels that you may arrange however you choose. You can arrange them in a row, in a zig-zag pattern, or in a form.
Shapes lights from Nanoleaf can also be combined to create new shapes. You can add extra hexagons, huge triangles, and small triangles later if you start with the Hexagon Smarter Kit. A controller with a capacity of 500 panels and a power supply with a capacity of 21 hexagon panels are included in the kit. You can truly use Nanoleaf’s lights to create a distinctive aesthetic in your space with the hexagons, numerous triangle sizes, and complete RGBW lighting.
9. Nanoleaf Essentials Lightstrip
Best Smart LED Strip Light
There are two sections to the Nanoleaf Essentials Lightstrip. The beginning package, which includes the controller, power supply, and a 40-inch or 80-inch light strip, is the first thing you’ll need. You can then add more strips to the strip, stretching it up to a total length of 10 meters with more segments beyond the basic package. The starting kit’s power supply can output 30 watts, which is enough to power the entire system at a bright 2,000 lumens. You can choose from a variety of colors and white color temperatures with the strip. You may also sync other Nanoleaf lights if you have them.
10. Ikea Myrvarv
Best Diffused LED Strip Lights
Color: 2700K Dimmable White | Wattage: 12 watts | Length: 6.7-feet | Extendable: No | Smart Home: Yes
When LED light strips are shielded from direct line-of-sight, the impact is often the best. It’s a little overwhelming to see the individual LEDs. However, if you can’t hide the strips and have them shine from a hidden area, the Ikea Myrvarv light strip works well out in the open due to its diffusing application.
This LED light strip has a two-layer light-diffusing tube incorporated into it. This gives a continuous lighting effect over the length of the strip rather than a number of individual lights, and it also makes the illumination nicer to look at directly. The strip consumes only 12 watts while producing 1,200 lumens. A 6.7-foot strip of dimmable white LEDs with a soft 2700K glow is included. Although the strips themselves cannot be extended, the Tradfri wireless dimmer driver with which they must be paired allows you to run multiple strips in tandem.
11. Twinkly Flex
Best Flexible LED Light Strip
Color: RGB | Length: 6.6-feet | Smart Home: Yes | Warranty: 1-year
Many light strips allow you to arrange them in various configurations, but they aren’t necessarily attractive when bent or shown in the open. The Twinkly Flex tackles this problem by encasing the LED strip in a translucent, very flexible shell. It also comes with hardware for mounting the strip on your walls.
The light strip’s flexible shell allows you to put it up like a personalized neon light. Because the strip is 6.6 feet long, you can use it to build a little decoration, such as an abstract shape or something more particular by combining strips. In contrast to the directional glow of bare LEDs, the translucent tubing will allow it to shine softly and diffusely no matter how you put it up. You can change the illumination with different colors and even animations using the strip. You may also bundle your strips together in the app for more exact control if you have more than one.
What To Look for in LED Light Strips
With the growth of the LED light strip market, it’s gotten increasingly difficult to discover exactly what you’re looking for. If you want to make sure you get exactly what you want, keep these suggestions in mind.
Don’t be too concerned with the brand name; instead, concentrate on the features and reviews. Small brands you’ve probably never heard of control the majority of the LED light strip industry. This can be perplexing and daunting, so try not to be too concerned. Instead, concentrate on the advantages of the light strip. Is it equipped with the Bluetooth connectivity you require? Is it monochrome, RGB, or RGBW? Remember that while RGB strips can create white, only RGBW strips can provide a real lightbulb-like white. Once you’ve decided it matches your needs, take a close look at the photographs and read the reviews to see what other people have to say. Those three factors will reveal whether the company is simply rebranding a low-cost strip or is committed to being in business for the long haul.
The type of lighting provided by the strip is the second thing to consider. Don’t base your decision just on the image, especially if you’re buying an RGB strip. If you’re looking for white illumination, be sure it has the right color temperature. If you’re looking for RGB lighting, you’ll want to know how it works. Is it possible to set it up in sections or does it have to be the entire strip? Is the lighting fixed or does it change over time? Are there any presets available, and if so, can you customize or build your own? Because there are so many alternatives, don’t be scared to move on to the next one if the answers aren’t clear.
Third, pay special attention to the lighting you use. Many low-cost strips include remote control, although more expensive strips frequently have smartphone apps. While remotes might be useful, they are generally limited in terms of color, brightness, and personalization compared to app-enabled lighting strips. If you go with an app-integrated strip, double-check that it links the way you want it to. Smart home integration, such as Amazon Alexa or Google Home, requires Wi-Fi, thus Bluetooth light strips are faster and easier to set up.
Lastly, consider how long you’ll need the strip to be. You don’t have to be accurate when cutting many LED strips to size, but if you’re looking for RGB, lowering the length may affect what lights can be displayed and how well your strip fits the app. Don’t sever the rainbow’s tail.