Flexible LED ribbon light strips are available from lighting, automotive, and some specialist doll house and model lighting suppliers. Available in colors, plus warm and bright white, the LED strips are sold by the foot. Warm white and bright white LED light strips are available in a waterproof (but not submersible) form, useful for garden railways. These LED strips can be cut and wired every three bulbs, making them very useful for uplights or overall lighting for miniature display boxes. They run off the standard 12 volt DC power supplies used with model trains and dolls houses.
LED Lights That Are Easy to Use
The flexible ribbon strips of LED lights are usually mounted on an adhesive backed strip of copper tape about 1/3 of an inch wide. Usually sold by the foot, (currently for prices from $12 a foot and up) they can be separated into sections as small as three LED's. A strip of 3 LED lights draws less current than a single conventional grain of wheat bulb so they are ideal for places where you need to use battery power. Strips have markers for cutting into sections and markings for the places to solder connection wires. With 60 LED lights per meter, each 3 LED segment is 2 inches (51 mm) long. Clamp on connectors are also available from some companies to make easy connections to the strips.
These lights work well hidden under molding trim at the ceiling line of a room box, aimed to reflect off the ceiling. Their low profile (just over 1/16 of an inch high) makes them easy to use as the light source behind room box windows or patio doors to simulate daylight coming through a window.
The lights are available in several single colors, plus a slightly yellow white, often called a warm white, and a bright or cool white which is close to the color of halogen or fluorescent lights. Some companies sell color changing strips, which coupled with a color controller, can be programmed to change colors across millions of color shades.
Like all LED lights the strips are polarity sensitive, if wired in backwards, they will not light unless the connection is reversed. The lights require a transformer to run or they can be connected to battery boxes as they operate on direct current.