Strip vs puck vs light bar

Choose a bar for anywhere you prepare food. It is the only format of the three that reliably publishes an output figure high enough for the counter target, and the diffuser is designed for the distance involved.

Choose a COB strip when the light will be visible as a line - along a shelf edge, under a floating shelf, around a display - or when the run is not a straight rigid length.

Choose pucks inside cabinets and glass display units, where a pool of light on a shelf is the effect you want rather than a fault.

A conventional LED strip is a row of discrete emitters spaced along a flexible tape. Looked at directly, or reflected in a polished stone or gloss laminate counter, each one is a separate bright point - so the reflection is a dotted line, which reads as cheap and is genuinely distracting.

COB - chip on board - packs the emitters densely under a continuous phosphor layer, so the whole strip lights as one line. It costs a little more and it is the correct choice anywhere the strip or its reflection will be seen. If your worktop is matte, this matters much less and a conventional strip is fine.

Bars and pucks come off cleanly: the adhesive pads are small and sit on a cabinet underside, which is usually finished board or veneer, and they release with gentle heat from a hairdryer.

Strip adhesive is a full-length bond and is the one format in this category that can genuinely damage a surface - particularly on painted plaster or thin veneer. If a strip is going anywhere other than a cabinet underside, run it inside an aluminum channel and mount the channel, or lay a strip of low-tack painter's tape down first and stick to that. The detail is in no-drill lighting.