LED Light Bars: How to Choose and Install

If you want to make your car, boat, or mobile home unmistakable, your satisfaction with the variety of LED lighting is guaranteed. Different colors and light intensities set no limits to your creativity. With a large selection of first-class LED strips and customizable modules, all planned lighting concepts can be put into practice.

LED strips and LED lights are also ideal for energy-saving lighting in the outdoor area, e.g. in the awning of a mobile home or on a boat, and they also create a pleasant light that matches the natural ambiance.

Why Use LED Light Bars in Cars

Attractive LED design lights give your vehicle an individual, modern appearance. With this lighting, your car becomes an eye-catcher – wherever you appear, you will attract admiring glances!

The attractiveness of the vehicle and the attraction of light play into each other’s hands. Light is the perfect addition to your vehicle – it catches the eye and causes a stir. But only with the right LED light can you bring out the full visual potential of your vehicle. And emphasize the shape of your car.

LED Light Bar Types

LED bars and strips are available in many different versions. You can install the LED bar with little effort and, for example, provide beautiful decorative lighting. You can use the controller to set countless colors and activate great lighting effects. Here you will find an overview of the different LED bars on the market and what you should pay attention to when choosing.

The two terms are LED strips and LED bars are the most common. LED adhesive strips are self-adhesive. However, LED strips should not be confused with an LED bar. In contrast to the flexible LED strips, the LED bars have a rigid construction with a fixed length.

LED light pods

LED light pods are a great addition optionway to add additional spot, fog, DRL, and driving light to your personal vehicle or work truck.  Light pods are easily mounted to trucks, jeeps, ATVs, boats, motorcycles, or other vehicles with ease. to your UTV. They provide safety, security, off-road capability and functionality at night or during other low light conditions. The only hard part about installing LED’s is finding the right spot for them on your vehicle. While there are several places you can mount lights on a standard UTV, sometimes it makes more sense to use an attachment.

UTV’s are not the only ones who can utilize LED light pods. They are also great to have if you get caught out away from home when traveling or camping. It is always good practice to carry an extra set of lights in your car, truck, or camper so that if the power goes out or you need to change a tire at night, you will have some lights to see with and help prevent any accidents from happening.

LED Light pods are also in place in order to provide better illumination in low-lighting conditions such as when offroading or camping. While it is not necessary, the color of the light they emit tends to be more natural than other light sources.

How Are LED Bars Constructed?

The usual LED bars consist of a rigid or flexible carrier material with integrated copper conductor tracks. The LEDs are placed on it at intervals and soldered to the live conductor tracks. SMD light-emitting diodes of type SMD5050 are used in many LED bars. These have a dimension of 5.0 x 5.0 mm. Depending on the variant, there is a series resistor or a current driver next to each LED.

The individual LEDs are grouped together electrically in segments. The LEDs are connected in series within a segment. All segments are then supplied as a parallel connection. The cutting marks are located between the segments, at which an LED strip can be separated.

The finished LED bar is coated with a protective varnish to protect the conductor tracks from corrosion. On LED strips, there is an adhesive strip with which the LED strip can be easily attached.

In principle, LED bars and strips are always constructed in a similar way and differ mainly in details. Different LED chips are used with different assembly densities. The number of channels determines the variety of colors. Below you will find an overview of the common variants of LED strips on the market.

What LED Bar Colors Are There?

RGB LED strips are most popular. The abbreviation RGB stands for the colors red (red), green (green), blue (blue). Strictly speaking, each RGB LED consists of three light-emitting diodes of the respective colors. With the usual LED controllers, a total of around 16.7 million colors can be set at least theoretically for an RGB strip by mixing the individual colors.

With an appropriate mixing ratio, white light can also be generated. Due to the limited color spectrum of the RGB LEDs, however, the white tone achieved appears quite unnatural and the colors of the illuminated surroundings are falsified. To solve this problem, LED bars with other LED combinations are now also available.

In addition to the three channels for the basic colors, an RGBW strip has an additional white channel. The decision for the color temperature must be made here before buying, as it cannot be changed.

An RGBW strip has two additional white channels with cold white and warm white LEDs. In addition to bright colors, the color temperature of the white light can also be set at any time.

White (unicolor) stripes have a clearly defined light color that cannot be adjusted. LED strips in dual white, on the other hand, have two white channels. In this way, the color temperature can be adjusted at any time.

LED Bar Voltage: 12V or 24V?

Most LED bars, especially in the consumer sector, are operated with 12V low voltage. But there are also variants with 24V operating voltage. These are particularly advantageous in larger installations with long cable lengths. When the voltage is doubled from 12 to 24V, the current is halved.

This results in the following advantage: If two LED bars or strips are connected to the same power supply unit, one with a short lead of 1m length and the second strip with a thin lead of 10m length, it would light up a little darker. Even a single LED bar would get darker and darker from the feed point to the end of the bar.

One small disadvantage, however, should not be concealed: With most 12V strips, 3 LEDs are always connected in series and form a segment where the LED strip can be shortened. With 24V strips, however, a segment consists of 6 LEDs. The distances in which the strip can be shortened are therefore greater.

LED Strips: A Versatile Option

The tape thickness is only 0.5mm so it can easily fit into various tight spaces and the flexible design allows it to be molded into any shape you want. You can also trim the strip to any length so that you are not limited in creating this backlighting effect. The LED strip offers 360° lighting and, thanks to the energy-saving, has a very long service life of approximately 15,000 hours.

LED tapes are manufactured by the meter and are usually sold in the trade as multiples of one meter. The strips are often wound up on a roll for delivery and transport. The best-selling LED strips are 5 meters long and can be shortened to the required length.

Conclusion

Modern vehicles have backlighting, which is already included in the standard equipment. If you don’t have them don’t worry, you can backlight your vehicle with LED bars or LED strips. Installation is easy and the choice of the strip position is up to you only. Give your vehicle a new image and create an interior that makes a great impression.