Set Up Cheap Ambient Lighting with Rope Lights

Tag : outlet switch

A big part of my extreme home office makeover was setting up ambient lighting around my desk and keyboard usinginexpensive LED rope lights. Many of you were interested in moredetails, so let's take a look at the step-by-step of my desk setup,and how to incorporate ambient lighting into other living spacesthe same way.
The core of my ambient lighting system is inexpensive LED ropelighting. I purchased my LED rope lights for ~$8 per 18 footstrand. Here's a 12-footer for under 10 bucks on Amazon .

Conveniently, the strands come with tension clips. While theseclips are there to secure the lighting to the side of a home aroundthe holidays, they work just as well for securing the lighting tothe underside of the desk. Despite facing downward the clips aremore than strong enough to hold the roping in place (see the imageon the right). If the clips weren't included, I would have usedsmall zip ties and a staple gun to safely secure the roping.

The diagram below is a bird's eye view of the the lighting systemlayout under my desk. To keep things simple I drew it as though thedesk were clear and you could see the underpinnings.

The two large black rectangles are the file cabinets, and thesmaller rectangle is the mounting plate for the keyboard tray. Theyellow line is the LED strand, the blue dots are the clips securingthe strand to the desk, and the green line is the wire connectingthe push button switch, the red dot, to the outlet. The push button switch is actually a foot switch, the kindcommonly used to turn Christmas tree lights on and off. I stuck itto the underside of the desk with mounting tape. Prior to adding itto the light system, I had to plug and unplug the cord for the LEDlights which made me use the lighting less frequently. The easierit is to turn your lights on, the more often you will.

The ambient light around the desk proved to be so enjoyable in theoffice, that I used the leftover ropes in the master and guestbedrooms. Check out the following two pictures from the masterbedroom. I used the same techniques in the other bedrooms.
Just as I secured the rope lighting to the bottom of the desk, Iattached it to the back of the two wardrobes. Both are turned on anoff by a foot switch, as is the under bed lighting. The lightingunder the bed is attached loosely to the slats of the bed framewith zip ties. The rope lights don't get more than a few degreeswarmer than the room itself thanks to the efficiency of the LEDsinside, making them a safe choice for the bed.

What started as an attempt to light up my keyboard with some LEDrope lights I scammed from the bargain bin at a local big box storeended with soothing ambient light in both my office and bedrooms.If you pursue your own ambient lighting project, make sure to sharethe results in the Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Flickr group .