Accessory LED Lighting

The introduction of Light Emitting Diode (LED) lighting in recent years has opened up a myriad of possibilities for custom pub accent lighting. LED’s are low current consumers, so they’re extremely energy efficient and they’re easy to install. Apart from the convenience of installing these lights, LED strip lighting can also offer a variety of color options as well. You can choose to go with a standard dimmable white light, or for a few extra bucks, purchase a Red-Green-Blue (RGB) LED solution that co-locates individual LED’s that produce red, green, and blue light, which can combine to create any color under the rainbow. The accent lighting possibilities for these products are amazing!

Dimmability, Power, and Control

So there are three main things that you need to consider when designing an LED solution to provide accent lighting for your custom bar. They are, dimmability, power, and control. If you want to be able to dim your lights, be sure to purchase LED’s that are capable of being dimmed. It’s also important to note that LED’s do not dim by limiting the current supplied to them like a standard light bulb would, they are dimmed by pulse-width-modulation, which means that you’ll require a special black box to be able to dim them, but there are plenty of options available that you can order online.

Although it’s important to make sure to note the voltage that is required to power your LED solution, the current draw required by your system is also extremely important. LED’s typically draw current in the milliamp range, but be sure to multiply that current draw per LED by the number of LED’s in your system to come up with the full current draw of your system. Then be sure to purchase a power supply capable of supplying more than enough current to support the entire system.

Finally, there’s the issue of control. RGB LED systems especially require some form of control to allow the lights to change color. Some even more sophisticated sets allow you to individually address each LED so they can be turned on and off separately. If you are a true techie, the best way to do this is to program a microcontroller or to download some code from an online source. However, for those of us looking for an out of the box, turn-key solution, there are systems on the market that already include power and control along with the LED lights all in a single package.

Installation Tips

Once you’ve settled on a solution, it’s time to perform the install. For our example pub build, we chose to create three distinct zones of light. Zone One illuminates the interior of the upper cabinets, Zone Two illuminates the bar top and Zone Three, the undercounter lighting and liquor bottles on the rear cabinet. Zones One and Three feature the RGB colored lighting, while Zone Two will have a dimmable white light provided by LED puck lighting. We chose a fairly inexpensive, all in one control and power solution to start with and maybe in the future, a more sophisticated, Arduino driven microcontroller system can replace it.

The RGB LED’s we purchased come in a weatherproof 5 meter strip that includes an RF remote control and a power supply. We bought one of these systems for each zone, measured and cut the LED strips to length and then installed the strips using a hot glue gun. The LED strips do include what appears to be a 3M adhesive backing, but since ours are made in China, the adhesive is generic and worthless, a hot glue gun works much better. For those areas that require a connector or a 90-degree turn, simply cut the LED strip with a pair of sharp scissors, trim the weather proof coating back with a razor blade and solder wire leads onto the contact pads, making sure to keeps the leads in the same order to maintain the circuit. We used some simple 4-pin audio microphone connectors, so the system can come apart when the pub is disassembled.

The white lighting is a little different, but actually simpler. These white light pucks were purchased from EnvironmentalLighting.com. They have a nice looking, chrome bezel that matches the look of our pub and they run on 12-volts. To install them, we routed a channel in the board, ran a two wire harness to each light, and then ran it back to a power supply that converts the 110VAC household power to 12VDC. To dim the lights, we just put a pulse-width-modulated dimmer switch inline with the power wire. The light switch on the wall is used to turn the puck lights on and off and the dimmer knob will be hidden in the bar.

When complete, we can create a variety of moods using a different color in each zone and by dimming the white light producing LED pucks.