Interior lighting makes a huge difference in the ambience of your boat. Most older boats have ceiling-mounted incandescent lighting, which is not only inefficient, but also has an unwelcoming interrogation room feel.
I’m guessing Rendezvous originally had rope lighting in the valances, and that was replaced by a previous owner with RGBW LED strip lights. The strips were stuck directly to the wood, and many of the controllers were missing or removed. The wiring appeared temporary, which made me think the controllers probably failed and were quickly removed, but then never cleaned up.
The original strip lights with no controller.
To be fair, you can only see the light strips if you are looking for them, so dressing them up isn’t really necessary. Since several of the controllers were missing, though, I decided to redo the entire installation.
I did a lot of research for lights (read: watched a bunch of YouTube videos while lounging on the couch) and decided to use aluminum channels with rounded frosted covers to house 60 LEDs/meter light strips. The specific components I used are:
- BTF-LIGHTING 5050 RGB+Warm White 12mm DC12V LED strips
- BTF-LIGHTING RT9 controller kit
- Muzata 17x20mm aluminum channel with cover diffuser
The denser strips and frosted covers give the lights more of a consistent brightness—almost like neon—instead of seeing individual LEDs. This also makes the installation look a lot more professional for curious eyes. The salon lights have two separate power wires, which requires two controllers. This is not a problem because the remote can control four separate zones, each with multiple controllers.
This means I can individually control lights in the aft stateroom, salon, galley, and forward berth with the same remote.
I had originally planned to cover the controller with a teak box and may still do that, but it’s low priority since you can’t see it unless you know to look.
The new strip lights installed in aluminum channel.
The controller gives the lights a nice, quick fade-in effect when powered on using the wall switch. Set to white, they provide plenty of light without the glare of the ceiling lights.
The strips provide a pleasant, even light when set to white.
And because they are RGBW lights, you can easily set them to any color, like red if underway at night.
You can easily set them to any other color.
I found an inconspicuous place at the lower helm to mount the remote holder. Most of the time we just want warm white lighting, so rarely need to use the remote.
I remote comes with a holder that I hid away at the lower helm.
This was one of those fairly easy projects that makes the boat seem a lot more “finished”.