Guide to LED Tapes

LED tapes have been popular for many years and a multitude of variants have become available for every environment possible. TLW offers a large range of strip lighting and LED tapes, including CCT LED tapes, RGB LED tapes and IP rated LED tapes. To help you understand LED tapes in detail, we’ve created this detailed guide to LED tapes.

What are LED tapes?

LED tapes are strips featuring LEDs with a self-adhesive backing. LED tapes are also known as strip lights.

Benefits of LED tapes

There are a lot of benefits to using LED tapes as your lighting.

• Low energy consumptions

LED tapes have a low energy consumption so are cheaper to power

• Versatile

LED tapes are versatile as they can be cut, adapted to the required environment and installed in a large range of situations.

• Can be cut-for-purpose

Our LED tapes can be cut for the purpose required. We offer LED tapes to order in one, two, three, four and five metre lengths. Most of our tapes can also are cuttable every 25mm, 50mm or 100mm, depending on the tape.

• Numerous colour options

There are numerous colour options available using LED tapes. There are single colour tapes (such as the Callo, Mila, Alpha, Beamer and Bon), CCT tapes, RGB tapes (including RGB and RGB+) and RGB+CCT (such as the Chameleon) tapes.

• Easy-install plug and play kits available

All TLW’s LED tapes come with micro plug connectors so they can be easily plugged into a driver and turned on. This sort of strip lighting is often called plug and play as they are easy to set up.

• Waterproof options available

TLW offers a wide range of waterproof LED tapes, known as IP rated LED tapes. Most of our waterproof strip lights are IP65 or IP66 rated allowing them to be installed in bathrooms and kitchens.

LEDs per metre

Our LED tapes offer various LEDs per metre; this means that the tapes feature the provided LEDs in each metre. The LED strips are available in subtle 30 LEDs per metre to super bright 300 LEDs per metre. Usually, the more LEDs there are per metre, the brighter the lighting.

Voltage

Voltage is the pressure that from a power source that turns on the LED light. All our LED tapes are 12V. For more information on voltage, please view our LED jargon buster.

Wattages

Wattage is the power unit used to rate energy transfer in LED products. The strip lighting from TLW varies in wattage per metre from 2.4w per metre to 24w per metre. Generally, the higher the wattage is, the brighter the lighting. For more information on wattage, please view our LED lighting jargon buster.

Micro plug connector

All of our single colour LED tapes feature power leads with micro plug connectors. The micro plug connectors make it easy to simply plug the tape into the driver. Our CCT and RGB tapes also come with power leads and connectors.

Single colour LED tapes

Single colour strip lighting is available in various colour temperatures from warm white (3000K) to natural white (4000K) to daylight (6000K). To find out more about colour temperatures, please view our guide to colour temperatures.

Lumens

Lumens is the brightness of the LED product. The different single colour tapes offer different amounts of lumens according to the colour temperature. TLW explains the lumens of each tape in its product descriptions. Find out more about lumens in our LED jargon buster.

IP rated LED tapes

IP ratings are used to indicate a LED products protection against liquids and solids. IP rated tapes are strip lights that can be used in the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. We have a range of IP65 and IP66 rated tapes, which can be used in zones 1 and 2 in the bathroom. Read our guide to IP ratings and IP zones.

CCT LED tapes

CCT tapes are strip lights offering colour temperature adjustable to allow the user to choose between white colour lights. TLW offers a high quality 9.6W CCT LED tape.

RGB LED tapes

RGB tapes allow users to adjust between a rainbow of colours to light up a kitchen, bathroom or bedroom. TLW has two RGB tape products that can be installed.

RGB+CCT LED tapes

RGB+CCT LED tapes are RGB colour adjustable and colour temperature adjustable which means owners can change from a wide variety of colour lights or select from white lights. TLW offers the Chameleon RGB+CCT LED tape.

Where can LED tapes be installed?

LED tapes can be installed throughout the home, office or any environment to add ambient or task lighting.

How to install strip lighting

Our LED tapes can be installed using the self-adhesive 3M VHB tape on the back of each tape. Alternatively, our tapes can also be installed using aluminium profiles.