LED Layout Lighting

[JohnR]

I'm looking at putting some LED lighting on my layout, and was thinking of using LED strips, preferably those that can be adjusted for colour and brightness etc. via a remote control or phone app. 

 

However, looking on eBay etc there seems to be a bewildering array of such lights - so does anyone have any experience? 

 

My thoughts are to actually use two different strips, one for a warm white and the other for a more cooler white, to be able to get the right mix. 

[Ouroborus]

Phillips Hue is generally regarded to be the best.  It is also expensive.  One strip will allow you to 'dial-in' the colour temperature you wish and if you need more light, extensions simply plug in.  Lidl recently had light strips in, controllable via their app.  Whilst they were a lot cheaper, they didn't seem to have as much output, nor as much versatility.   As ever, it seems you get what you pay for.    If you can afford it, go for Hue.

[dasatcopthorne]

For Elbow Lane I used a 5m roll of warm white and an associated power supply from eBay.

 

I was very happy with this but after a couple of months I began to see that the whole scene was a bit 'yellowish'.

 

In the end I added some Cool White LEDs equal to about 50% of the Warm White. The layout has a sky coloured backscene so I didn't add too much Cool white.

 

Much better now.

 

Dave.

Edited April 28, 2021 by dasatcopthorne

[CloggyDog]

I use one strip each of warm and cool white on my micros, just the regular cheapo strips off ebay.

They are wired together and fed down to a 2.1mm jack/socket pair, standard on all my micro layouts. 

I run them off either an 8 x AA battery pack or a 9v wall wart.