AILBTON Led Neon Rope Lights,15m Flexible Led Rope

Really nice ambiant lighting
My 12 year old daughter really wanted LED lights in her room. She’d seen her friends with them. I thought they looked tacky so tried to dissuade her. My issue was that when you can see each of the LED’s, it just doesn’t look very good. I explored various ways in which you can mount LEDs behind wooden coving, or encase them inside plastic mounts but each way of doing it just involved a lot of effort and expense.

I came across these LED Rope lights and I liked the way that the end effect is that you cannot see each individual LED light.

They are more expensive as a result, but if you want the effect that I wanted then you need to pay a bit more.

In terms of installation – a few people have said it was really easy to do. I wouldn’t go as far as that, it took a lot of time and effort to get them up, and lots of swearing.

To start with, they come with plastic fittings and small screws. My first attempt was to no nails the underside of each plastic fitting and work them up the wall and across the ceiling. I left them do dry for 12 hours and then tried to mount the rope.

However, the rope light was too heavy and it pulled the plastic mount off the wall. I then decided to use the screws provided, but I wasn’t confident they would screw in, and be held very well in to plaster.

I used a drill to make a pilot hole in the middle of each fitting, which was made much easier since the plastic fittings were already on the wall and in the correct place.

I then used the small screws and they did go in to the plaster well, and hold their place.

The last step is to clip the rope light in to the plastic fittings. This was actually quite difficult, because the rope led is wider than the clamp of the fitting. So you had to ease one side in, pull the plastic clamp to the side and push quite hard to get the rope light in to the bracket.

When you are up a ladder, holding the rope light in to place, trying to balance and force this in to the clamp, you can see how it’s not that easy.

The end effect is really good though.

Positives:

– Look really good, you can’t see each led light
– Lots of different colours, and it beats to sound/music
– Remote control is fairly responsive
– They have a heavy weight feel to them, they don’t feel or look like cheap tacky LED’s

The negatives:

-One issue with them so far, is that the ap doesn’t recognise the lights, so we can’t get the ap to talk to the LEDS. There is a remote, so they are still working, but it would be great if we could just connect to them via bluetooth on the phone. This may be something we can resolve with turning them off and on and turning off bluetooth etc. I can update at a later date if this is resolved

9/11/2023 EDIT – The recommended ap to use is called “Highlighting” from the Ap store. This AP wouldn’t connect to the lights for us, however a different ap called “Lotus Latern” did work and control the lights

– Malleability. They are quite bendy, but they won’t bend in a certain way. In the 2nd image you can see that in the corner of the ceiling, the lights would not bend correctly in to the corner. They can bend left and right (like a snake) but not at a 90 degree angle back on themselves, so getting them round the corner of the 2nd wall was tricky and you can see that the light isn’t quite facing the way it should.