Product Spotlight: Halo Black LED Undercabinet Lighting

If you’re like most people, wanting to make changes and updates to your home often accompanies the New Year. As you consider the changes you want to make to your home, you’re probably looking for ways to make the biggest impact for the least amount of money. One of our favorite, most affordable ways to make a big change around the house is with undercabinet lighting, and these black LED undercabinet lights from Halo are an excellent option for helping you take the most advantage of your cabinet space.

Compared to halogen undercounter lights, these LED undercounter lights offer an 88 percent energy savings, which adds up to $510 in total savings over the life of the fixture. Although the fixture comes with a five-year warranty, these fixtures are known to last for up to 22 years!

At only ¾” tall, the low-profile design of these lights makes them ideal for lighting up the space in your cabinets without taking up valuable storage room. These lights come in three different lengths — 12 inches, 18 inches and 24 inches — as well, so you can choose the size that fits your cabinets best without having to resort to a customized option. This innovative design also allows you to connect any combination of fixtures up to an 800W total load, making it especially easy to provide lighting to each of the cabinets in your kitchen, office or workspace.

In addition to its integral on/off switch, we love that this fixture is fully dimmable with a wall switch. To ensure you choose the right dimmer for the fixture, we recommend this dimmer from Lutron. Dimming provides energy savings as well as the ability to choose the perfect amount of light for any task or mood.

What home improvements are on the top of your list for 2015? Let us know in the comments below!

How to Make an LED Light Marquee Letter

If you spend time on Pinterest or any blogs featuring crafts to make your house more chic, you’ve probably seen this trend: big, lighted marquee letters for the backyard. Although this DIY project may look difficult, it’s really not too hard — all you need is an afternoon and a few simple supplies and you’ll have these DIY marquee letters as a new, exciting backyard decoration!

What you’ll need:

• One standard piece of ½ inch-thick pressure-treated plywood
• A marker
• A jigsaw
• Weather-resistant outdoor light bulbs
• A power drill
• Spray paint in the color of your choice
• Light socket string
• Hot glue

Once you’ve gathered your supplies, lay the plywood down flat and begin to map out how you want your letter to look. You may think “the bigger, the better,” but be sure your light socket string will be able to cover the size of your letter. Use your marker to draw the letter and give yourself a guide when cutting later. Don’t worry if you make any mistakes or decide to change the size of your letter mid-way through — this will be the back of your DIY marquee letter, so no one will see what you did in this step!

Now, use your jigsaw to carefully cut out the letter along the guide you made for yourself. Once your letter has been cut out, it’s time to start planning where you want your bulbs to go. Use your marker again to map out a location for these bulbs so you know where to drill. Then, take out your power drill and make holes along your guides, ensuring that the holes are large enough for the light sockets to go through.

As soon as that’s complete, you can spray paint your letter whatever color you’d prefer. Some people love gold for a classic look, but this is the time to make your decoration your own, so choose any color you’d like!

After the paint has dried, arrange your light socket string into place and secure with hot glue. Then, screw your LED outdoor light bulbs into place and hang your new decoration!

To easily ensure that the marquee light is lit each evening, we’d recommend putting it on a photo-controlled device, which turns on as the sun sets and automatically turns off when the sun rises thanks to its light-sensing technology.

This project is so easy, it’s quickly become one of our favorite LED light bulb projects, and we hope it’ll become one of yours, too! Leave us a comment with your tips or tricks to make this project even simpler!