People Love Led Lights. They are fun, pocket-friendly, easy to install, and consume little power. You can almost use them wherever you want. They are very helpful in lighting those areas where installing a tube or bulb might be difficult like under the kitchen drawer or in the corners of the room. In this article, we will see How to Connect Multiple Led Strip Lights in a very easy and short time.
Nowadays LED lights to come in a lot of variety and type. White, Warm White, Multi Colors, or the one with a remote which can sync with your music player. There is no limit to this. Installing them is super easy, most of them have a sticky backside, you just need to peel off the cover and stick it wherever you want.
You can use creativity and imagination with led strip light in your house and make any part of your house in designer and catchy piece of art. Kids love to have such led lights installed in their room. Before that, you need to know How to Connect Multiple Led Strip Lights, as their will instance when you may need to cover a long area.
Led strips are mostly shockproof. They also come in dustproof and waterproof versions. You can control their style and lighting pattern with remotes as well. Nowadays due to solar lights, LEDs are in huge demand as they consume little power and they are portable which is perfect for solar lighting.
Generally, Led Strips come in good length ( standard one is around 5 Mtr or approx 16 feet ) But sometimes a problem arises when you want to lit up a lot more area and you may have to connect a couple of led strips or more for that matter.
In this article we will see how we can do that. What are the challenges and what are the solutions for those
How to Connect Multiple Led Strip Lights – Step by Step Guide
1 ) How to cut Led Lights
The first step is to cut Led light. For this, you have to cut the led lights properly in order to function them entirely. If you cut it wrong then the extended light might not work.
Don’t worry, it is a very simple task if done carefully. In every strip, you will see a Black Line after some led points and you may also see a cutting mark over there. You need to cut the led lights from this place. You also find a copper joint over there.
See nothing complicated here, it is that simple just cut it from the Blackline or from the cutting mark. Make sure you use scissors as cutting from a knife or any other thing might not give a good cut.
2 ) Connecting Multiple Led Strip Lights
Second step is to connect those led lights after cutting. There are two ways to do it.
- Clipping
- Soldering
Connecting Multiple Led Strip Lights using clips that you can easily find online or offline. Clips are good if you going to connect short lengths of led lights or for short periods of time. As strength and carbon issues can come and later you may need to fix it again.
There are different types of clips available in the market. Some might need you to remove the plastic film from the led and some of them work directly. You just need to put in led lights and close it.
There are wire connectors that are also in the market which you may use in those areas where led strips can’t stick or where you don’t need led lights like around a curvy angle or in a corner.
Soldering is a more effective and durable way to connect Led lights and if you are going to connect multiple led strips then soldering is the way to go.
Not only is the more fault-proof way to connect it also saves you from the headache of correcting the joint frequently. But in this case, you need to have soldering equipment and you should know how to solder properly.
Few things to remember while connection led strips are, you need to remove the plastic covering from the joint Also you would want to cover the soldering joints with some tape on it as it makes them more durable.
Another thing to keep in mind while connecting the led lights is to make sure the positive goes on to connect the positive and the same for the negative. To make it more clear, we need to connect red wire to red wire and black wire to black wire only.
What if you connect them wrong. Don’t worry they won’t get explode they will just not work or for worse if might diffuse your power adopter.
3 ) Total Power Calculation –
After connecting your led strip, the next step is to assess how much total power you will need to properly light up your new led strip. Normally a 5 mtr Led strip to need a 12 Volt, DC power outlet with close to 30 Watt Power
Actually it depends on what type of led strip you are using. Some of them have fewer nos of led components in them as compared to others for example Some led strips have 30 led per meter some of them have 60 led per meter, more led per meter required more wattage. You will find this information at the label of your led strip.
You need to get a power supply according to your led strip length. If you are connecting two led strip of 5 mtr each which consumes 30-watt power per 5 mtr then you need to get a 70-watt power outlet
Also, you want your total power supply to be at least greater than 10% to the required power. If you need a total power supply of 100 watts then you need to have a power supply of 110 watts. you do not put any pressure on the power supply. It does not get heat and it makes led strips life long
There are different power adapters out there with different wattage capabilities. So you can choose them according to the power you need.
If you don’t want to cut and joint your led strips then you can simply extend the wire of each led light and plug into a capable power supply after doing the watts calculation. This way you don’t have to cut and join the led strips.
Now after you have seen, How to Connect Multiple Led Strip Lights. we can say led strip can be a very time saving and the cost-effective way if you want to lit up any part of your house. Connecting them just makes them more effective and useful.
Joy have been interested in lighting in general since child hood thus done a Diploma in Lighting & Electricals at the age of 15 apart from regular studies. Now I just want to share some useful information about the lights with people.