Choosing your LED skirting board

An LED skirting board is an aluminium profile fitted at the bottom of the wall, in place of an ordinary skirting board. A groove runs along its whole length. The LED strip sits inside it, behind a diffusing cover. The light comes out through a narrow slot, never head-on.

This is the principle of indirect lighting: you don't light the room, you light a surface that throws the light back. The floor or the wall becomes the source. The difference shows in the evening. A ceiling light flattens volumes and digs out hard shadows. A line of light just above the floor does the opposite — it lifts the walls away, stretches the perspective, and leaves the top of the room in a soft half-light.

You never see the source. That is the point that matters. Standing up, at eye level, you don't make out a row of dots but one continuous line. Nothing dazzles, nothing reflects in a television screen, and nobody goes looking for where the light comes from.

What our customers actually use it for:

• crossing a corridor at night without switching on the ceiling light
• marking out a staircase, an entrance, a hallway
• giving a living room a second mood, lower and warmer
• replacing a night light in a child's bedroom
• picking out a wall, a low unit, a kitchen island

This is not task lighting. You won't read a drawing by it. It is mood and circulation lighting, which comes alongside the main sources, not in their place. Put another way: a lit skirting board replaces the lamp you switch on at ten in the evening, not the one on the ceiling.

Our profiles come in 40, 50, 60, 65, 80, 100, 120 and 150 mm. Not every height is available in every profile: each product sheet states its own. Four criteria settle it, in this order.

The ceiling height

A tall skirting board visually eats into the bottom of the wall. Below 2.50 m, stay between 40 and 60 mm: the room keeps its breathing space. From 2.70 m upwards, 80 or 100 mm carry no heaviness. The 120 and 150 mm need volume — a double-height living room, a stairwell, an entrance hall. Fitted in a standard bedroom, they crush it.

The skirting board already in place

In a renovation this is often the criterion that decides, and it takes thirty seconds to measure. Take the height of the existing skirting board before you order. If you replace it with a lower one, the mark left by the paint or the wallpaper will stay visible above it, right around the room. Choosing an equal or greater height saves you redoing every wall.

The cables to hide

Some profiles keep space beyond the housing for the strip: enough to run an aerial cable, a network cable, a speaker wire. The taller the skirting board, the more comfortable the room. If you are counting on that, tell us before you order — the section actually free varies from one profile to the next, and it is an expensive disappointment to discover on site.

The style of the room

A low, slim skirting board disappears. That is what a contemporary interior is after, where the wall should seem to fall straight into the floor. A tall skirting board owns it: it draws a base, it gives the room a footing. In an older flat with mouldings, 100 or 120 mm hold their own against the cornices; at 40 mm the proportions look cut short.

Torn between two heights? Order a sample of both. A 10 cm offcut held against your wall, in your light, at the hour when you actually live in the room, settles in one evening what a screen will never settle.

This is the decision that changes the mood the most, and the one people look at least. Three directions exist in our range. They do not replace one another.

Downward light — lighting the floor

The slot faces the floor. The light falls in a sheet along the skirting board and reflects off the floor covering. The floor becomes the lighting surface. This is the most useful direction for moving around: corridor, staircase, entrance, hallway at night. The result depends a great deal on the floor. A pale parquet or a polished tile throws back plenty; a dark polished concrete or a carpet absorbs, and the line stays readable but carries less far. It is the direction most widely represented across our profiles.

Upward light — washing the wall

The slot faces the ceiling. The light licks the wall and climbs in a gradient. This is called wall washing: the wall lights up from the bottom towards the top, and the room looks taller than it is. It is the most spectacular direction, and the most demanding, because grazing light reveals everything. Smooth plaster and matt paint give a superb result. A textured render, a badly sanded plasterboard joint, a slightly wavy wall, and every flaw takes on a shadow. Before choosing this direction, run a torch along your wall, almost flat against the surface: you will see exactly what the skirting board will show.

Front-facing light — drawing a line

The slot faces the room, the light comes out head-on through the diffuser. You are no longer trying to light a surface: you are drawing a line. The result is graphic, a continuous thread of light that runs around the room and underlines its plan. Some light still falls on the floor, less than with downward light. This is the direction to keep in mind when the skirting board belongs to the décor as much as to the lighting.

Can you mix them? From one room to another, yes, without hesitation. Within a single room, no: two directions on one continuous run produce two moods that contradict each other, and the eye sees it straight away.

The skirting board from the DIY superstore is made of PVC or veneered MDF. Ours is made of anodised 6063 aluminium. This is not an argument about finish: the material changes four concrete things.

• How it lasts. White PVC yellows under ultraviolet, first of all near the glazed doors and windows. Anodising is not a layer laid on the surface but a conversion of the aluminium itself: it does not yellow and it does not flake off.
• Stability. PVC warps. A length exposed to the sun or run along a radiator distorts and comes away in the middle. Aluminium moves very little: a length fitted straight stays straight.
• The cut. A corner is made by cutting two lengths at 45°. Aluminium cuts cleanly on a mitre saw with a fine-toothed blade. PVC burrs and can melt against the blade, MDF chips at the edge. And it is that mitre cut, clean or botched, that decides whether the corner is invisible or whether it is all you see.
• Heat. An LED strip gets warm. Not much, but continuously and along its whole length. Aluminium carries that heat away, the profile acts as a heat sink. In a plastic profile the heat stays against the LEDs — and heat is what shortens their life. That is the technical reason, not the aesthetic one, why a serious LED profile is made of metal.

Veneered MDF behaves well as long as it stays dry. One over-generous mop, one leaking dishwasher, and the foot swells without ever going back. In a kitchen or a shower room, the question does not even arise.

The profiles are supplied in lengths of 2500 mm. The calculation fits into three lines.

1. 1.Measure the run: the linear metres of wall to be lit, following the walls. Count only what will actually be fitted, with doorways and built-in units deducted.
2. 2.Add 5 % for cutting offcuts.
3. 3.Divide by 2.5 and round up. That is your number of lengths.

An example. Twelve metres of wall: 12 × 1.05 = 12.6 metres, divided by 2.5 gives 5.04, so six lengths.

An honest reservation about that 5 % margin: it assumes segments of a reasonable length. Eight segments of 1.40 m means eight offcuts — each length yields only one usable segment and the rest goes in the skip. On a very broken-up run, allow generously, or call us with your plan.

The parts that go around it

• Connectors: one at each join between two lengths on the same straight line.
• Internal corners: the corners of the room seen from inside. The most numerous.
• External corners: wall returns, pillars, door reveals. Easy to forget on a plan, impossible to improvise on site.
• End caps: a pair closes off the two ends of an open run. A closed run, going all the way around the room, does not need any.
• Light slot cover: one per length. It is supplied clear whatever the finish of the profile.

Make a dimensioned sketch, wall by wall, with the corners marked internal or external. Ten minutes of drawing save an incomplete order and a week of waiting in the middle of the works.

The colour temperature

We offer two warm whites: 2700 K and 3000 K. The gap looks slight on paper; it shows in your home. 2700 K leans towards amber. It is the shade of a filament lamp: it warms up a parquet, a stone, a dark wood. 3000 K is more direct, more neutral, and holds up better with grey tiling, with concrete, with a white kitchen.

If you are hesitating, look at what you already have. The real mistake is not choosing the wrong colour temperature, it is having two different whites in the same room: one of the two then looks dirty. Line the skirting board up with your other sources.

The power and the transformer

A strip is defined by its power per metre, in watts. Multiplied by the length fitted, that gives the total consumption. The figure appears on the data sheet of each strip.

The strip runs on extra-low voltage: the transformer handles the step down from the 230 V of the home. It is always sized with a margin. You never run a transformer at 100 % of its rated power — it heats up, it ages quickly, and the slightest peak makes it drop out. The rule we apply: power per metre × number of metres × 1.2. You then take the first model in the range above that result. Our transformers come in 30, 60, 100 and 150 W.

On a long run, two transformers are sometimes better than one: you split the run in two and feed each half from one end. The voltage drop at the end of the line goes down, and the light stays even from one end of the wall to the other.

Then it has to go somewhere. It needs a ventilated, accessible place close to a supply: a cupboard, a low unit, a suspended ceiling with an access hatch. Never shut inside a partition with no access — a transformer gets replaced, and it will be replaced before the profiles.

In Switzerland, the connection to the 230 V mains is a matter for the electrician. The extra-low voltage side, on the other hand, goes together without any particular difficulty.

During building work

The comfortable case. Everything is settled before the finishes: bring the supply to the point where the transformer will sit, and leave a tail at the start of each run. A wall plastered and painted before installation gives an even bearing surface, and that is exactly what upward light needs. Fit the skirting board after the paint and after the floor.

On a finished wall

The installation stays simple, the difficulty shifts to the supply. You have to bring the extra-low voltage to the start of the run without opening up the partition. Two common solutions: start from an existing socket and run the cable inside the hollow of the skirting board itself, or drill discreetly behind a piece of furniture. Work this point out before you order, not after.

Gluing or screwing

Gluing gives the neatest result: nothing shows on the face, and the profile can be taken off later without leaving holes. It calls for a sound, dry, dust-free and reasonably flat wall. On a powdery wall, old plaster, a doubtful substrate, screws remain safer. Either way, offer up all the lengths dry first, with no fixing: that is the moment to check the corner cuts, not when the adhesive has taken.

Cut at 45° for the corners, at 90° for straight joins, with a fine-toothed blade. Deburr the edge. Finally, check that the strip is pushed right to the bottom of the groove before clipping the cover on: a badly seated strip shows up as dots instead of a line, and that is precisely what we were trying to avoid.