If you have ever installed the light strips or plan to install some, you might experience them falling down at some point. Most light strips come with double-sided tape attached but after some time, it can lose its stickiness especially if you move them or someone else moves them. Here I have some helpful tips and some suggestions about light strips. And I’ll tell you a couple of things you can do to help it do not fall down in the first place as well as a couple of solutions you can do to hang them back up.
The first thing is really simple and that is to use rubbing alcohol to clean the surface before installing. Don’t think you can skip this and just blush off the surface with your hand. Using rubbing alcohol will help remove dust and oils allowing the double-sided tape to stay up longer. Using rubbing alcohol before putting up these acoustic foam panels with the light strips they’ve stayed up.
The second tip on helping the light strips not fall down is how you install light strips on a corner. The edges and corners of light strips is usually where light strokes start to fall down first. If you just try to bend the light strip to make a 90° corner, then it will cause the light strips to fall down faster. That’s because there is more air coming in contact with a stickiness of the light strip and there will be more tension in the light strip because it’s trying to bend back to solve this. You can cut the light strips and get corner connectors. However, cutting a light strip is an annoying thing. You have to figure out which connector to get. And if you get waterproof light strip connectors when your light strips aren’t waterproof then they won’t fit.
The other solution is creating a loop with the light strips. Instead of bending the light strip in the direction you want it to go, bend it in the opposite direction and keep going until if forms a loop. This will make it so there isn’t tension in the light strip and it will sit more flush with the surface. Doing this is going to help the light strips stay up longer without needing to cut it or buy any extra connector. Now if you feel everything right to install them but they still fall down. Here’s a few things you can do.
Pull down the light strips which doesn’t take much force since the double-sided tape that comes with it isn’t that strong. One option is to buy some double-sided gorilla tape and add it to that have started to fall. Cut off a small piece of tape and then cut that in half long ways since the light strips aren’t that wide. Stick it to the light strips and then the most difficult part of this double-sided gorilla tape is how long it took me to get the plastic adhesive cover off. I don’t have long fingernails so that could be why after I got it off and attached the light strip. It was rock solid I pulled on the corner and it was much more difficult to pull down than the original light strip tape. This stuff is better than the double-sided tape that comes with the light strips. The tape is also stretchy so it came off the surface really easy after pulling it down and it didn’t leave a sticky mess.
Using some mounting clips are much faster to install compared to the gorilla tape. Since the adhesive cover is easier to peel and you didn’t need to cut anything. They also held up the light strips really well. And you couldn’t get the light strips to fall down with the clips instead the livest rose which has been eclipsed and fall out of the clips.
These clips stuck on to the surface extremely well because it was really hard to pop them off when I did the sticky parts were left on. So if you plan on using these mounting clips, they are going to work great but plan on leaving them there for a long time like forever.
You can use the double-sided tape to fix the light strips under your kitchen cabinets and also can use the clips to pick the light strips under your bed. So if your light strips fell down or you plan on moving them, hopefully these will be some good options for you to hang them back up.
