Whether you're lighting your home or business, LED strip is a fantastic light source for creating stunning effects.

Alcoves are great for getting creative, and help give the room an extra layer to your overall lighting.

LED Strip works best where you see the light it produces, but not the strip itself, I'm sure you've all seen an installation where all you see is a row of dots; it simply looks cheap and nasty.

The great thing about alcoves is there's almost always somewhere to hide the driver, tails and mount the tape in a way to get the light where you want it, and disguise the tape or channel so you don't see those dreaded dots.

If you have any kind of lip or pelmet to the alcove, a 45 degree channel, or extrusion, can work well, by throwing the light back into the alcove. This is great for illuminating books, ornaments etc. When choosing a channel, one with an opal or frosted diffuser will spread the light better & reduce the dot effect.

Another great way to light an alcove is to recess the tape into the shelves, and there are aluminium extrusions, designed specifically for routering into woodwork, usually the underside of the shelf works best, but it depends on what effect you're looking to create, and what you're illuminating. This works fantastically well in commercial applications such as bars and restaurants, and is becoming the norm for illuminating the optics behind a bar, where the go to choice is most often RGB or RGBW.

The job in the photo is one where we used a screen printed photo to create the illusion of an outside window view, and back-lit it with CCT tape, programmed to change colour and intensity to recreate daylight at different times of the day.