The best TV backlights

A television in a dark room is a bright rectangle in a black field. Your eyes spend the evening adapting between the two, and that is the part that feels like strain. Putting a modest light on the wall behind the screen lifts the surround closer to the picture, so there is less adapting to do.

That is the whole idea, and it explains the two rules that follow from it. The light goes behind the screen, facing the wall, so you never see the source itself. And it stays dim - this is a wash, not a lamp. The same reasoning applied to rooms generally is in glare and visual comfort.

The second reason people buy these is the room rather than the picture: a lit wall behind a dark screen is better than a black rectangle when nobody is watching anything. That is a decorating job, and it is why every strip here also does color.

1. Where it sticks. The back of the television, not the wall. Adhesive on paint is how these cost a renter a deposit, and it is why one pick here is built specifically to mount on the screen.
2. Published output. Strips are the worst category in lighting for published figures. Two of the three here print a maximum lumen number; the third does not, and says so.
3. A usable white. A color strip that cannot do a clean white is decoration only. Look for a dedicated white emitter rather than white faked from red, green and blue.
4. No sync box required. Screen-matching is a different product at a different price. Everything here works as static or scene lighting out of the box.
5. Control that outlives the app. Matter support is the difference between a strip you can still use in five years and one that depends on a company.

LIFX Z TV - the pick. 1,500 published lumens, no camera, no sync box, and it is designed to stick to the back of the television rather than to the wall - which is the detail that matters in a rental and the one most strips get wrong.
Cons: no published CRI; it is a Wi-Fi product, so a dead router means app control stops; and at full output it is far brighter than bias lighting wants - run it low.

Govee M1 - the best color per dollar. RGBICWW means individually addressable segments plus dedicated warm white emitters, so it works as a plain warm wash as well as an effects strip. If the wall behind the screen is also the wall of the room, this is the versatile choice.
Cons: output is not published in lumens; the adhesive is the usual paint risk if you mount it on the wall; the controller box has to live somewhere.

Nanoleaf Essentials Matter lightstrip - the brightest, and the most future-proof. 2,200 lumens maximum and built on Matter and Thread, so it answers to Apple Home, Google and Alexa without a vendor app in the middle.
Cons: no CRI published; Thread wants a border router in the house to be at its best; and 2,200 lumens behind a screen is far more than the job needs.

Clean the back of the screen first. Adhesive fails on dust more often than it fails on plastic. An alcohol wipe and five minutes of drying doubles the life of the install.

Keep the strip inside the outline of the television. If you can see the emitters from the sofa, it is too far out, and a bright line in your peripheral vision is worse than the problem you were fixing.

Set it once, in the dark, with something playing. Bias lighting looks wrong at every brightness except the one you find this way - usually far lower than you expect.

Renting? Mount to the television, route the cable down the back of the stand, and keep the adhesive off the paint entirely. The wider rules are in renter-friendly LED strips.