Outdoor lights don't need to be for just the holidays. I've been meaning to add some proper new lighting to my patio space, which was previously lit by dim, malfunctioning, solar lanterns. I bought them many years ago and, since then, they've suffered the perils of inclement weather and wild animal "curiosity" for far too long.
I'd been investigating smart LED strips for a while and decided now was the time to pull the trigger. Like many homeowners, I've heard mixed things about outdoor LED strips: some report they're surprisingly effective for outdoor lighting, while others say the opposite. In the end, I settled on a couple of sets of $30 LED light strips from a fairly unknown brand so they were cheap enough that even if they didn't work as advertised, I wouldn't be out a massive investment.
As it turned out, these ultra-cheap LED strips surprised me in a number of ways, most of them pleasant, some frustrating, some unexpectedly delightful. Here's how.
They're brighter than you'd expect
The lights were quite a bit brighter than I expected. Alan Bradley/CNET
As mentioned, I chose a couple of boxes of inexpensive smart LED strips from Amazon, ensuring they were weatherproof and offered the lighting modes I was looking for (good holiday choices as well as neutral modes for the patio strip).
Installation was troublesome in places because the cheap plastic clips the company included kept breaking when I was using galvanized concrete nails to attach them to the concrete of my porch and patio. In fairness, the clips aren't intended to have nails hammered into them. They come with small screws, which worked fine on softer surfaces, although the clip portion itself still wasn't great for snapping onto and holding the strip in place.
These lights worked better for colder colors than warmer colors, but some traditional lighting would have probably helped too. Alan Bradley/CNET
Once they were in place, however, I was very impressed with how bright the strips were. While it's not very visible in photos, they're bright enough to glow even in full daylight and they really pop at night. Naturally, brightness depends partly on the color you select, with cooler colors really blazing. If you crave even more light, you could also install aluminum channels or diffusers to boost brightness further but, for my purposes, the brightness out of the box was ample and a welcome surprise.
Bear in mind that these aren't floodlights. They serve well for mood lighting and ambience, but aren't necessarily a great fit for security lighting around outdoor cameras.
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