I have been asked on a project to spec cove lighting as the designer doesn't have confidence in the electrician (cheap LED tape light) She wants to avoid hotspots and wants a nice even effect in a cove ceiling.

What would be the best system to install/spec?

[Link: klusdesign.com]

This will cover any design possibility. Of course, most if not all, cove lighting is tape led. These profiles clean up that look. Pricier than you’d think too.

The question becomes how you/client want it to look? My own house I have tape led along my walls up high, then left about a half inch gap between my ceiling and crown molding. Gives awesome ambient lighting and night lights. The profiles I use under counters/cabinets. Waiting to finish up a few other areas of the home.

LED strip lighting.

You can find a product for just about any application.

I had a darkish stained wood ceiling 30 feet up in a room that really needed more light at night.

The existing track lighting with small spots just wasn't working and the halogen bulbs did not last very long and changing them out was a pain - not something the homeowner wanted to tackle.

I believed that LED strip lighting would work well. Fortunately there was a timber frame which provided beams which gave a hidden surface on which to install the strip lighting.

I used an earlier version of this product:

[Link: superbrightleds.com]

I installed one strip of LEDs on each side of the room (the long side - appx 30ft) and powered them with dimmable LED drivers.

They provide enough light to overcome the darkness of the wood ceiling and the height to provide decent light at night in the otherwise dark room

The homeowner was very pleased with the result.

Frederick

Here are some tips:

1) The hot spotting = Even with regular LED tape lights, you will still 'ridges' of light as you look along the reflection. If the designer is very anal about this, then you want to use the aluminum tracks to put the LED strips in, with the acrylic diffusers. This will make for a very smooth lighting with 0 hot spotting.
The aluminum tracks & diffusers add significantly to the cost, usually more expensive per foot than the LED lighting itself.

2) Do not power the LED strip at one end and run in all the way around the room. What will happen is the LED strip will be bright at the beginning and dimmer at the end. When the dim end and the bright end meet up, it will be very noticeable. Instead, send power both directions - that way the bright beginning are with each other and the dim ends come together as well. Also splitting the voltage drop with have less of a dimming affect at the ends.

I'd go a step further than Brad. I'd divide the run into sections between six and ten feet long, and run power onto the tape every six to ten feet, whatever you decide. The important thing is that you don't cut the tape into those sections and power them. You actually add power connections at each of these points.

His first point cannot be overstated, but let me be less subtle: if you can see ANY reflections of individual points of light, even faint roundish spots, your lighting will look like cheap trash. Don't light up a reflective surface without using some kind of diffuser, even if it causes the lights to be dimmer. Extrusions keep you from seeing the lights directly, so they're great, but it's sometimes harder to avoid seeing a line of hot spots reflected off of a surface.

If you hang out in theater groups, a "frost" lighting gell filter would be handy.

I started searching for an example and discovered this site that might have some handy films.

Or, a variety of products: http://www.klusdesign.com/

Try some led "rope" lighting. Pick up some and do a test run at home, demo room, or in the office

Having the LED's inside that plastic rope seems to diffuse the bright spots pretty well.

Are you planning to control or dim these lights?

Many LED strip light diffusers work poorly. Test it out first.

You may want to reach out to a local lighting rep. They sometimes can help.

Environmental Lights (www.environmentallights.com) has been my go-to for this kind of stuff for the last 5-6 years.

Their LED strip lights cost more than the crap you get on eBay/Amazon, but their products are UL listed, they have high CRI options and tight control of color temperature so it all matches.

They have a very large selection of products...

I feel like you are getting ready to learn a lesson. ID doesn't trust the electrician = red flag #1. You're not a lighting guy = red flag #2. ID wants it to be perfect while asking a newbie to handle it = red flag #3.

I would ask myself these questions...

1.How much money can I make doing this?
2.What could go wrong?

Sometimes it's better to say "Im not a _______guy" (fill in blank with service of choice like "lighting"). This way you don't have a client angry with you for something you make $0 on...or worse...something you lose $ on.

Mac just gave the best answer in this entire thread.

What Mac said. I earned some serious whip marks on a lighting project about 2 years ago. It ended up being so rough, the factory regional still joked about it in the training last week. Manufacturers of LEDs test their lights on cheap old school dimmers from Lowe’s and HD. Most know nothing about real lighting control. I even had one manufacturer that couldn’t tell us if their product was reverse phase or forward phase. Another sword up and down their tape light was 0- 10 volt. Turns out it was PWM. After days lost trying to get rid of flicker, it was a 20 minute fix.

If you want to do this, start with the lighting control company you plan on using and ask what works. And don’t take “we don’t make recommendations.” As an answer.

Oh, btw, hot spots are the nature of LED tape lighting because it’s made up of individual bulbs along a strip. While some handle this better than others, and dimming can help, the answer is some sort of diffuser that keeps the individual LEDs from reflecting on the wall

It helps, too, not to have the LEDs close to what they're illuminating, but A LOT of LED outputs are semi-focused.