Toe-kick and cove lighting

Most strip lighting on this site is judged on how much usable light it puts on a counter. These two installations are different: the strip is never seen, the light is indirect, and the effect is the product.

Toe-kick lighting hides a strip in the recess at the base of kitchen cabinets, washing light across the floor. It does two things at once - it acts as a very low-level night light for a kitchen at 2am, and it visually lifts the cabinet run off the floor, which is why kitchens with it look considerably more expensive than they are.

Cove lighting hides a strip in a ledge or recess near the ceiling, aimed up. The ceiling becomes a large soft emitter, which is the most flattering indirect light available in a room - the same physics that makes a torchiere work, but built into the architecture and running the length of a wall.

Both depend on one rule, and it is absolute: the strip must not be visible from anywhere people sit or stand. A visible strip is a row of bright dots, which is the opposite of the effect and worse than no strip at all.

WOBANE COB strip - the pick for both. CRI 90+ at 3000K, and crucially a COB construction: a continuous emitting surface rather than discrete LEDs spaced along a tape. In a cove, where the light hits a ceiling a few inches away, discrete emitters produce a visible scalloped pattern of bright and dark. A continuous strip produces a smooth wash. That single property is why it is the right choice here even though it publishes no lumen figure.
Cons: no published output, which for a cove doing an ambient job means you are estimating; and it runs from an adapter, so there is a brick to hide.

Enbrighten 18 in. bar - for a cove that has to do real work. 1,245 lumens at CRI 92 with five color temperature settings and dimming built in. In a deep cove where the fixture is genuinely invisible, a bar delivers far more output than a strip and its published figures let you plan the ambient layer properly.
Cons: a rigid bar leaves gaps at corners where a flexible strip would turn, and it is thicker, so it needs a deeper cove to stay hidden.

GE 36 in. convertible bar - for long runs. 3000K at CRI 90, linkable from one plug, and 36 inches covers ground quickly along a long cove or cabinet run.
Cons: no published lumen figure; high, low and off rather than stepless dimming.

LAMPAOUS puck kit - the wrong tool, included as the comparison. Pucks in a cove produce exactly the scalloped pattern this page is about avoiding. They belong lighting objects, per best LED puck lights.

Check the sight lines while it is switched on. Before committing the adhesive, tape the strip in place, turn it on, and look from every seat in the room and from the doorway. If you can see the emitters from any of them, move it back or deepen the lip. This is the whole installation.

Toe-kick: set it back and aim across. Mounted at the front edge of the recess, a strip is visible to anyone seated. Mounted at the back of the recess aiming outward, the cabinet face hides it completely and you see only light on the floor.

Cove: leave a gap above the strip. A strip pressed tight against the ceiling produces a hard bright line at the join. Two to four inches of gap lets the light spread before it hits, which is what produces the soft wash.

Keep both dim, and dimmable if you can. Toe-kick lighting at anything above a glow draws the eye to the floor, which is the last place you want it. Cove lighting is an ambient layer, and an ambient layer that cannot be turned down is a lighting problem. Strips dim at the driver rather than at a wall dimmer - see dimming LED strips and light bars.

Plan the cord before you stick anything. Every option here runs from an adapter, and the brick has to live somewhere out of sight with a route to an outlet. The rules are in how to hide a plug-in fixture cord.