What type of step lights and path lights are available?īrick and step lights are installed on the front of steps to illuminate the path for safety. You can find affordable Malibu outdoor lighting on eBay at various price points. Different heights, bulb types, and finishes make each fixture style a possibility for lots of different settings. Malibu makes all sorts of outdoor lighting, including light kits, path and directional lights, brick and step lights, tree lights, transformers, accessories, and wire lights. The difference between 12V and 24V is typically insignificant, but if you truly do not have a strong preference for one over the other, hopefully this article has convinced you of the benefits of a 24V system! Read next: 12V systems have some advantages, too! Read our article about the pros and cons of 12V systems.Shine Bright With Malibu Outdoor Lighting Equipment This is true for products beyond LED strips that also have daisy chaining capability.įor example, Waveform Lighting's LED strips have a specified max run length the differs depending on voltage: 16-ft (5 meters) for 12V, and 33-ft (10 meters) for 24V. Therefore, 24V LED strips will typically be able to handle twice the length that a 12V LED strip would, assuming that the power ratings of the two products are the same. In applications such as LED strip lighting, the maximum continuous length of an LED strip is typically dictated by the electrical current that the LED strip copper traces can handle. Power supply size can be important when working with projects such as LED strip lights in under cabinet installations where there may be space constraints. Part of this is also influenced by the physics relationship between electrical current and conductor size needs, as much of the internal wiring of a power supply unit is comprised of copper wiring. Similar to conductor size, power supply size is also determined primarily by current rather than voltage. You can use our voltage drop calculator to make sure you are still using sufficient conductor gauge for your LED strip projects. In very extreme cases, this can even lead to electrical fires.Īll else equal, a 24V LED system can get away with half of the electrical conductor requirements. If excessive amounts of current are forced through a small or narrow copper conductor, resistance inside the conductor itself will begin to become significant, and contribute to voltage drop and heat generation. Total current, rather than voltage, determines the thickness and width of copper conductors needed to safely transfer power. Simply put, a 24V LED system will draw half the amount of current as a 12V LED system to achieve the same power level. To maintain the same power (P), if voltage (V) goes up, current (I) must come down by a proportional amount.Īs a concrete example, if we keep 48W as our target output, a 12V system will require 4 Amps (12V x 4A = 48W), while a 24V system will only require 2 Amps (24V x 2A = 48W).
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It is through configuring the LEDs in a particular parallel vs series combination, that the voltage of an LED system can be made to match a particular power supply voltage.Įlectrical power is determined by the equation P = V x I. 24V is better suited for LEDs.ĭespite some of the most popular power supply voltage options being 12V or 24V DC, it's important to remember that (most) individual LEDs are actually 3V DC devices. If you're curious to learn more about the technical aspects, read below for more differences: 1.
If you're looking for maximum efficiency, we recommend choosing 24V DC, because of its lowered potential for voltage drop. This gives you more flexibility in cutting the LED strips to your desired length. If you're new to LED strip lights, we recommend choosing 12V DC, because of the shorter distance between cut-line intervals ( 1 inch for 12V vs 2 inches for 24V).
In general, the difference between 12V DC and 24V DC is not extremely significant as long as the correct accessories (e.g. Waveform Lighting's LED strips, for example, are available in both 12V DC and 24V DC.
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