DIY LED cupboard lighting

When we moved into our new house last year we found a rather large corner cupboard in the kitchen which was rather difficult to see into because it was so dark. The cupboard was a great size for storing food, and would give plenty of space, however we simply had trouble finding anything in it as all the light was blocked by standing in front of it.

A quick look on online and I decided that some strip LED lights and a 12V PSU should do something to change the situation. You can pick up either for a few quid from banggood.

White 12V self-adhesive LED strip

12V LED Power supply

 

Of course I didn’t want to be turning lights on and off by hand, as knowing me I’ll just forget to turn them off, so a spare micro switch on the 12V side seemed the appropriate option

Micro switch to turn off lights when cupboard is closed

 

I think the final result is pretty good, though it does bug me that theres a dead set of LEDs on the top shelf – didn’t notice that before putting them in…

The finished result

 

One piece of advice I do have is that it is worth buying the little self-adhesive cable tidy anchors for this sort of thing. While the LED strips themselves are self-adhesive, there’s a fair bit of wire linking them all together and trying to stick them out of the way with a hot glue gun like I did is just a recipe for getting very hot fingertips and a mess of hot glue everywhere.