low-profile and high cri lighting options

[curby]

I'm planning on getting some Bertby cabinets from Ikea for displaying knives, flashlights, and other EDC gear. I want to fit some lights on the backside of the front door to shine into the display area. The wood trim of the door overlaps the display area, so I'm hoping to install some low profile lights in that area. I'm thinking of using two strips of lighting running down the edges of the door, which should provide even, multi-directional light.

Obviously there is not a lot of room to work with, so I'll need something low profile. Due to the nature of the application, high CRI would be good to bring out the colors of the items.

I saw a review that linked to some ribbon lights by Oznium. These seem to fit the bill except that they may be very low CRI and reliability, as such products using small emitters often are. From the description, it's almost certain that they are wired in parallel, and therefore subject to the cascading failures often mentioned. Does anyone have any experience with these or similar products? Is it possible to get high CRI and reliability with low profile products? I'm not against paying for it if it's high quality.

In general, can I mix warm and neutral white emitters for better CRI?

 

[Tekno_Cowboy]

For low profile with High-CRI, the best I've seen are the Nichia high-CRI offerings. The drawback is that you need to buy 1400 from them in a go.

 

[spencer]

How about some high CRI P4s? You can buy onesies of them.

 

[Tekno_Cowboy]

True, the P4's work well, but I wouldn't exactly call them low profile. They're also pretty hard to find, but not next to impossible like the Nichia's

 

[Neondiod]

While your at IKEA's take a look at their DIODER http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/50119407 the RGB strips should give good CRI when white mode is choosen. The strips is PLCC6 based and the driver is included. A nearby product is rewieved here http://ledmuseum.candlepower.us/seventee/dioder.htm.

BR

 

[curby]

Thanks for the replies, folks. Obviously the 1400 roll solution isn't going to work, but it's nice to know that they exist. Hopefully someone will use them soon to create low profile lighting for store displays, etc. Would be better than using those horribly inefficient MR11 halogens that jewelry stores currently seem to like.

I'll look into the idea of using full-size emitters, but due to the space constraints, fitting heat sinking in there will be difficult to impossible even without the use of stars. It's probably the best bet in terms of reliability and color reproduction though.

I'm also considering side-lighting each shelf with a CCFL affixed with metallic adhesive tape. Something like:

  _______
O|_______

The tape would wrap around the tube and attach to the glass shelf, thus hiding it from direct view and controlling the spread of light.

I've considered the DIODERs. Unfortunately, the white produced from RGB emitters is often not very white at all. The single color white strips may be an option, but they're more than twice the cost of a CCFL solution per strip.