A brief discussion including a recommended light source. From what I read on other sites, the light source can be tricky as it needs to be held far enough off the Onyx to prevent hot spots (visual ones, not temperature). Not sure rope light would be bright enough. Found lots of info with a Google search of "backlighting stone".
I'm not real familiar with LED strip lights, but if they make one that's easily cut to length where the lengths can be connected by jumpers, you might be able to set up a tightly spaced group of strip lights. The problem with the rope is I don't think you'll be able to get the bends tight enough to maintain a consistent glow across the surface. You might be able to get that with tightly spaced strips. I'm thinking maybe someone might have tried that in one of the more recent poster lightbox threads.
How much wainscoting are we talking about here? The entire room perimeter or just an accent wall?
Will the wainscoting be visually broken up by columns or other design elements or is it continuous around the entire perimeter? I'm trying to picture an entire room with no interruptions and it seems like it would lose some of it's visual punch. I'm sure it will look great though. Sounds like an interesting project.
Regardless of what you use, it's probably going to take a mock up to figure out the correct spacing of lights and the best method of assembly. Not sure if these would work or not. They may not be bright enough. Or they may be too bright and either require more distance between fixture and stone or perhaps some type of diffuser panel sandwiched between the lights and stone.
Thinking ahead to your installation-regardless of the type of light you use, you might want the lights mounted on some type of board that can be pulled out from behind the stone in case a section burns out or needs repair. A removable wainscot cap could provide access.
My theater has back lighted onyx. It was originally installed with incadescent rope light but that had 2 problems - after 5 years it was starting to burn out and when it was on it would get the onyx really hot. That didn't matter for the onyx wall panels but it was bad for the onyx bar. I recently replaced the rope light under the bar with LED. There is a lot of rope light stuffed in there. I learned a couple things about LED - first not all rope lights are dimmable, and second the ones that are dimmable are not necessarily evenly dimmable all the way from 0-100% like incadescent are. When I try to put it down to a lower level I can end up with some flickering in the lights. So my bar now stays very cool to touch, but I have lost even dimming through my Lutron system for the bar lights. Its a trade-off I can live with.
Can't say I'm a big fan of the client's inspiration pic. I think there's too much of a good thing going on. I would have eliminated the stone from the side walls (it looks a little forced to me) and perhaps made a nice statement with the Onyx on the back wall, something to compliment the bar. I can't imagine you would keep those on during a movie, even dimmed. That's quite an expense for something that might only be on during coming attractions.
Just my two cents. I know it doesn't help solve the problem of how best to light the stone.
The rope lighting on the onyx is not perfectly even. If you knew there were rope lights under it and looked right at the onyx you could see the areas right under the rope lit up more. But basically the rope light is a mess of tangled rope behind the onyx so you get a randomish lighting pattern that looks perfectly good. There is a shelf under the onyx holding the rope light which is somewhere between 0"-2" behind the onyx. I think one of those full LED panel lighting setups someone linked above would be the more perfect solution, but I'm happy with the rope lights.
Quote:
Originally Posted by djmatl /t/1524428/any-experince-with-back-lighting-honey-onyx-panels/0_40#post_24534981
The rope lighting on the onyx is not perfectly even. If you knew there were rope lights under it and looked right at the onyx you could see the areas right under the rope lit up more. But basically the rope light is a mess of tangled rope behind the onyx so you get a randomish lighting pattern that looks perfectly good. There is a shelf under the onyx holding the rope light which is somewhere between 0"-2" behind the onyx. I think one of those full LED panel lighting setups someone linked above would be the more perfect solution, but I'm happy with the rope lights.
You can cut the LED tape every inch and then solder wires at the end to connect multiple sections together on a transformer. The tape I have used allows you to have 16ft of tape on one run. I've used a similar setup for under cabinet lights. The biggest issue I see is being able to dissipate the heat from the LED's. They get very hot. So, I would install the onyx panels with some spacers to allow air to circulate behind them. The aluminum bars help dissipate the heat, but you still need air flow. You can probably omit the horizontal section at the top and just have a series of vertical sections connected with #18 wire.
If you use a magnetic transformer, you can dim the LED's without special controls.
Have you looked at what TMcG is working on? He always does great planning and research, but I'm not sure if he has any prototypes that can inform your decisions here.
Interesting, why are the transformers so pricey? I'm looking at about 100 sq ft in ten sections. I also note that transformer has a manual reset button. That would be a problem as the transformers would be accessible but you would have to dismantle something. I'd probably stick them in the columns and you would have to pop the fabric panels. I'm putting this idea on the short list. I see they have a couple of warm white options which would be good.
I think this review is important to keep in mind:
Intended to provide some backlighting using LED strips SMD5050 (6 in total) cut back to 30". Spec for the strips says less than 6 amps/72 Watt for 196" - so I thought the 60W transformer would be adequate. It's not - needless to say that the temperature control switch triggered within the first hour of use and the humming noise was noticeable.
Upgrading to 300W instead has solved that issue - 150W might have been enough but I honestly didn't take my chances - the 60 bucks was just not worth it. Size the unit according to your use and leave room for contingency or make sure that you verify the consumption and not just trust the specs - would have saved me the money on the smaller transformer
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