LED strip lights for cabinets and shelves

The most common gap on that list is lumens. Strip is sold on length, color and features far more often than on output, and a product that will not tell you how much light it makes is a product you cannot plan a counter around. That is not a reason to avoid strip - it is a reason to use it for decorative and shelf lighting, where the effect is judged by eye, and to use a bar with a published figure over the surfaces you cook on.

Three mounting methods, in order of how much of your deposit they protect:

1. Aluminum channel, adhesive-mounted. The channel takes the strip; small adhesive pads take the channel. Removal is a few small pads rather than a continuous bond, and the channel also diffuses the light and sinks heat. This is the right method on any painted surface.
2. Painter's tape underlayer. Run low-tack tape along the line first and stick the strip to the tape. Cheap, quick, and it means the strip adhesive never touches the paint. Less durable in a warm kitchen.
3. Direct to a cabinet underside. Fine on finished board or veneer, after degreasing with isopropyl alcohol. Not on plaster, not on wallpaper, not on freshly painted anything.

Wherever the strip goes, the power adapter has to live somewhere. Plan that before you stick anything down - inside the cabinet above, on top of a wall unit, or behind an appliance - because an adapter dangling on a worktop undoes the whole effect.

• Floating shelves. A rigid bar looks wrong under a thin shelf; a strip in a shallow channel disappears.
• Open shelving and display units. Continuous light down a run of shelves is the effect, and no bar length will match the run exactly.
• Behind a screen or headboard. Low-output bias lighting, where nobody sees the source and output figures barely matter.
• Awkward geometry. Curves, corners, short runs, and anywhere the available depth is less than a bar's thickness.