Decorative LED lighting: measuring, hanging and controlling it
How to measure it, how to hang it, which app actually controls it, and what goes wrong first. Written by the people who manufacture the controllers and write the apps.
Start here
Sizing the supply, and why the far end goes dim
The one to read before you buy anything. What your run actually draws, why the controller rather than the supply is usually the real limit, and the ten-minute test that tells you whether an install is comfortable or marginal.
Which app controls your light?
The most common reason a light "won't connect" is the wrong app — they are not interchangeable, and an app that cannot speak your controller's protocol will never list your device. Three questions and a full table of all forty product categories.
Decorative and festive
- How many Christmas lights does a tree need? — in metres, because bulb counts tell you nothing, plus what a half-dark string means
- Curtain lights: sizing, hanging and which variant you have — six variants, three axes that actually differ
- Light screens: what a pixel curtain can actually display — the resolution arithmetic, and how far away it has to be
- Installing a firework LED light — the hub carries the load, and how much wall you really need
Projected and atmospheric
- Sunset lamps — distance, angle, and why the room never looks like the photographs
- Star projectors — coverage at your ceiling height, the speed setting everyone gets wrong, and laser safety
- Water ripple lights — why placement matters more than any setting, and what channel count buys
- Running water lights — how flow effects work, and how to tune them so motion looks smooth
Around the home and on vehicles
- TV backlighting — exact lengths for 43" to 85", and why bias lighting beats colour sync for most rooms
- Car interior ambient lighting — routing, power, and the reflection test you must do at night
- Motorcycle rear lighting — what decorative LEDs can and cannot do, and why vibration decides the outcome
Apps and control
- Colours come out wrong — red showing as green is channel order, and it is a thirty-second fix
- Music sync: three modes — including the one that keeps working after you put your phone away
- All apps and control guides
What this guide covers
We manufacture around forty categories of decorative and functional LED lighting, so that is the ground this guide stands on:
| Area | What we cover |
|---|---|
| Decorative | Curtain lights, light screens, firework lights, Christmas and festive strings, copper-wire strings, eave and outline lighting, camping lights |
| Colour lighting | RGB and RGBIC strip, multi-output controllers, synchronised and broadcast control, running-water and pixel lighting |
| Atmospheric | Sunset lamps, star and sky projectors, water ripple units |
| Around the home | TV backlighting, stair, cabinet and aquarium lighting, ceiling fan lights, tunable-white lighting |
| Outdoor and vehicle | Outdoor outline lighting, solar garden lighting, car interior ambient lighting, motorcycle and vehicle lighting |
| Apps and control | Pairing, grouping, music sync, scenes and timers, colour-order correction |
We only write about specific problems
General explainers — what an IP rating means, how RGB differs from RGBIC — are covered thoroughly elsewhere, so we leave them alone.
What gets written here are the questions with one right answer: which app pairs with the light in your hand, which part of a firework light fails first after a winter outdoors, why a strip shows the wrong colours and where in the app to fix it.
Nothing is sold here — no shop, no cart, no quote form — and the apps are free with no paid tier. When the honest answer is that a product cannot do what you want, the page says so: a Bluetooth strip will not follow the picture on your television, and decorative strip will not make a motorcycle easier to see.
About the source
We have been designing LED lighting controllers for over nine years, shipping to more than 190 countries and territories — around 95% of the world — and we develop sixteen control applications ourselves, Lotus Lantern, LotusLamp X, Magic Lantern, iMeshting and LightsPlay among them.