Ridiculously Easy DIY Light Strips! (no soldering)

I want to change my bathroom from this to this. The problem is I want it to not cost a lot, be high quality, and be easy. I mean, is that even possible? Well, after trying out many different options and almost failing multiple times, I finally found a great solution. Seriously, anyone can do this because there's no soldering required, and the results are amazing! Let me show you what I did.

All right, so these are my requirements for putting light strips under my cabinets in the bathroom. I thought about using something like Hue, LIFX, or Casa because I really like those light strips. But since I need to have special requirements for this bathroom, I decided not to use those. The reason why is that there's an outlet in the middle, and so I'm gonna have to go in two different directions. If I was using one of those light strips, it would be really expensive to either use two or really complicated to do that with those. So I'm going to have to figure out another way to do that.

My other requirement is that it has really good warm and cool whites because I'm mainly going to have the lights white in the bathroom. But I also want to have RGB colors for automations, and I'm going to be doing a video for a tour in my bathroom, showing some automations using these light strips. So make sure you're following the channel to not miss out on that video. The other thing is our cabinets are fairly new, so I don't want to drill holes in them to hide the wires. Maybe that's just because I have a problem committing to things.

"What was that? You're afraid of commitment?"

"No, no. I'm talking about the light strips and the cabinets, not you!"

Well, now I need to figure out how to fix that and how to hide the wires. Now that I know what I need, it's time to go shopping on Amazon. There are three things that are really important: a roll of light strips, a controller, and a power source. You purchase all of these things separately, unlike something like Philips Hue light strips. To connect all this, it's really simple, even though it kind of looks a little scary.

The roll of light strips has six wires sticking out of it, one for each color, a separate one for each white, a warm and cool, and a power source. The only reason you need to know that is so you can know where to plug that into the controller, but it's pretty intuitive. Like, R stands for red, B stands for blue, and you just use a screwdriver to press down on the connector to insert the wire. Then you plug in the power source, and that's it. The light strips work! It's pretty simple.

Now that the light strips are working, I need a few accessories to complete this project. One is a roll of wire that will allow you to connect the light strips to a power source or more light strips over a gap. Then there's some little connector clamps, and these are really useful because you can plug the wires in, and they clamp onto the light strip, so you don't need to do any kind of soldering to connect these two.

There's also some right-angle connectors that are optional because you can use a small amount of that wire to make a right angle. Now, to hide all this mess, I have a box that I'm going to put the power supply and controller in, and some wire covers to hide the wires. The last thing I'm going to be using is channel covers, which are completely optional. They have a few benefits, though; they help the light strips from falling down since they mount inside of this aluminum channel that's nice and smooth compared to mounting it straight to the cabinets. Then they just snap right into the bracket, so they stay nice and secure.

There's also a cover that helps to diffuse the light; that just makes it look a little softer and nicer to look at. All right, before I install these light strips, I want to set them next to my Philips Hue light strips and see if they're in the same league because many of the Amazon comments were saying that they're better and they're less expensive. So I was like, yeah sure, let's try them out. They both have a warm and cool white.

I set them next to it, looked at the Philips Hue, and those ones look great. Then I looked at these ones, and oh man, they look terrible! I turned on the white color, and it was like a bluish-purple color. I mean, there's no way I would be able to put these in my bathroom. So I'm in full-on panic mode because I'm about to install these light strips. I went on Amazon and ordered some more light strips, and these are very similar from a different company.

But the warm and cool whites look so good! Those little warm and cool white LEDs are right next to the RGB LED, which I actually prefer because they're spaced out a little bit better. The colors and everything are really saturated, and they look great! So I know I can connect one light strip into the controller, but I want to be able to split the light strips in two different directions.

So I was wondering if I can connect two light strips into the controller, and it turns out you can! You just twist together the same wires from each light strip. So the reds, the power, the blue, the green, and then you just insert those two wires into each controller slot. I'm glad this works because I thought I would need a splitter to make the light strips go into two different directions, and this is much easier.

So I measured everything, cut the light strips to size where they're allowed to be cut, and then I added those connector clamps. I just used some pliers to really clamp them down tight, and they stay super secure! For the right-angle connectors, the light strips slide underneath the pins, and then you just snap them closed. It's pretty simple.

Okay, so now that everything's working, it's time to install the light strips. Since I'm using channel covers, I need to first screw in the brackets. This turns out to be very difficult when you have such low clearance to the ground. I was trying to use a little bit, and there was no screwdriver that really worked. There could be a better way of doing this, but I used the best that I had, and after struggling for a long time, I finally got them all screwed in.

Whenever you're installing light strips, make sure to clean off the surface with rubbing alcohol. I'm using a microfiber cloth with some rubbing alcohol, cleaned off the channel cover, and installed the light strips, so it's a nice secure bond and they won't fall off. Then I just snapped on the cover and put the channel covers into the brackets, and that part's easy.

Now I got to hide all of these wires. The problem is this little wire connector is too thick, and it doesn't fit in those wire covers, so I don't even know what I'm going to do. Maybe use some bigger wire covers? Wow, the light strips are looking really nice!

"Thanks! Yeah, I try to hide the wires really well."

"Oh, actually, I don't really like that part. You see how it's like, it's sticking out in the front? Well, it's really hard to know; it's like an eyesore."

"What? Ah, looks like I need a better solution."

I can do that with two different things. One, I can move that wire connector off to the side next to the light strip, so it doesn't need to go into that wire cover. And then I can spray paint the wire covers to match the cabinets. It only took about two hours for the spray paint to dry, and it looks so much better!

All right, legally I'm obligated to say this: that my wife is right. Yeah, I said it. I'm not gonna say it again for a while, but it does look so much better with the wire covers painted to match the cabinets. I think all the light strips look so good! The warm and cool whites— it just looks amazing in this bathroom.

This is really helpful for us because if we're getting up to go to the bathroom late at night, we don't want the bright lights, even at a dim setting, in our eyes. So the light strips are perfect for this since they're automated with this motion sensor here in the bathroom. All right, before you comment and say you don't like that box down there, we're gonna put a vanity chair that's gonna cover that up, so you're not gonna see it at all.

I'm really glad I did this project. I've never really used these types of light strips in the past because they've always seemed a little too complicated, but it's actually not too bad, especially if you can avoid some of the things I ran into like buying the right light strips in the first place. So I'll link everything down in the description.

"Thanks for watching!"

"I like it, right?"

"Oh, thanks. But it's actually an automation to warn everyone that I just went to the bathroom."