Under-Shelf Lighting Options

A few tips on strip LEDs and LED and halogen puck lights for lighting under shelves. February 15, 2009

Question
I’m building a large cherry entertainment center about 8'x10' with a 24" open shelving unit either side. Now the question is are led puck lights the way to go or is there another option? I don't want a lot of heat and I don't want to spend $80 for each led strip light. The light needs to travel about 60" through four shelves.

Forum Responses
(Furniture Making Forum)
From contributor O:
LED is your best bet for energy usage and heat, but they're not cheap. Low voltage halogen is less expensive, but they throw off a lot of heat.

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From contributor D:
Are you looking for puck lights or lighting strips? We have had good success with Hera lighting. They sell LED, Halogen and Xenon in strips and pucks. For cabinets we usually use their Ecoline sets. They come compete with lights and transformer and have something like a 70” lead wire on each puck. You can also connect a three position touch dimmer to the transformer. We tried their Premium line but found that their Ecoline seemed better quality. We are still trying to figure that one out.

Since you asked about light strips that you plug lights into, we have used Lightology, flex strip lights. These are long wire strips that you cut to length and then plug Xenon lights into the sockets. I would not recommend these though. They are very expensive, and don’t work well as the sockets keep coming lose so bulbs keep going out and do to the number of bulbs they give off a lot of heat.