LED Lights For A Home Bar

Hello Again,

Rob here with another LED lighting idea that will certainly resonate with many of you homeowners who strive to make your home an awesome place to hang out.  Adding LED lights to your home bar!  My personal favorite.  Everyone has their own theme, their own style, their own look and feel that they want guests to experience when they come over.  Some like a sports theme, some like a music theme, some like a rustic look while some prefer a more elegant look.  No matter what your style, adding LED lights to your bar area can really help you achieve the look your after.

Decorative

Lights can be used for various purposes.  They can be used for function such as to illuminate a dark area used to clean glasses or areas containing some control switches and outlets. But they can also be used purely for decoration.  Installing LED lights underneath the bar countertop will add ambience and beauty. You could hang LED lighted signs like ones that read “BAR” or “Cocktails” or “Beer Here”.  You can also personalize it to say your name.  “Rob’s Place” for example.  A bit more costly for custom items like that but well worth it in the end. 

LED rope lights with changing colors and sequence modes really take your home bar to the next level.  You can customize their look according to the occasion. Holiday, game day, birthday, graduation, etc.  They typically have remote controls allowing you to change the settings from anywhere in the room.  You can hang them wherever feels right to you.  Outline the front base of the bar.  They will compliment the lights under the bar top.  If you have shelves or a feature wall behind the bar, you can hang the LED rope lights around that.  Just use your own creativity.  It’s your bar.  If one of your guests doesn’t care for the design, you can certainly show them the door ; )

Highlighting

A lot goes in to designing the perfect home bar.  People like to personalize it.  They hang photos, art, souvenirs, musical instruments, license plates, signed jersies and sports memorabilia.  The overall lighting around a bar is typically on the dim side.  That’s why it looks so nice when you add accent lights.  They are essentially small spotlights, but not overly bright. Just enough light to accentuate the item or area you want to highlight.

Shelves are a very common design addition to a bar area.  That’s where you display your die cast model cars, signed baseballs and your shot glass collection from around the world.  There are LED light fixtures that are designed for just that purpose.  Screw them in to the wall above the shelves and they curve inward so the light shines on your display screaming “NOTICE ME!” “TALK ABOUT ME!” lol.  You get the idea.  Or you could just buy itsy bitsy LED lights to hang up under each shelf.  A great effect.

Fancy

Elegance is a popular look.  Maybe you hang with a more sophisticated, classy crowd.  Have conversations about politics, art and finance.  Well you’re in luck!  There’s lights that compliment that style too.  In this case you most -likely won’t be using color-changing LED rope lights.  For this design you would use white, yellow and possibly blue lights.

Sconces are a great way to add elegance to any room including a bar room.  Do you have a ledgestone or reclaimed wood feature wall defining your bar area?  I love the way those look.  I’m a big feature wall fan. They are perfect canvases for LED wall sconces and little round LED accent lights.  They project limited distance light highlighting only the immediate area.  Adds beauty and of course, ambience.  Give it a try.  Your guests will admire it while they sip their rock glasses filled with Macallan 25 year old single malt.

Don’t forget over the bar lights.  A must have.  I like pendant lights myself but you could also install recessed LED lights or perhaps an LED track lighting fixture.  Also a great choice.  Whatever you go with just make sure to keep it subtle.  You don’t want to hang those huge 3 light fixtures like the ones over pool tables.  Too obnoxious.  Plus you’ll probably have a TV behind the bar.  Too much light will ruin the view.  Keep it classy but simple.

A Rustic Hang Out

Perhaps you’re more in to the country lifestyle. I love a rustic setting.  Ship lap and weathered reclaimed wood, patina’d copper and steel, old acoustic guitars hung on the wall.  It’s cozy. Homey even (probably not a real word but people use it dang it!).  With this kind of design one might say LED lights are not complimentary.  I have to respectfully disagree.  You have to go with lights more like what you’d use for the elegant look believe it or not.  But actually yellows, oranges and reds mostly.  White will work too but make sure either they’re dim or they can be dimmed otherwise they clash.  If you hang lighted signs like the ones we discussed earlier, that rule changes a little.  If there are different colors in the sign it would actually fit well in the rustic design.  It’s a specialty decoration item not really intended to compliment anything else.  No worries.

LED String lights are great in this setting.  Yellows and oranges look best but not overly bright.  String them up from the ship lap wall to tjhe header over the bar and back around the other side.  Maybe even extend them to the nearest support beam and wrapping the lights around the beam down to the floor.  Really looks awesome.  Again, it’s all up to you.  Everyone is different.  Even if two people both like the rustic look, they may not agree on exactly what that entails.  Personal preference.  That’s the beauty of home design.  Who are you designing YOUR home for?  The pope? Chris Stapleton? Visitors from other planets??  NO! It’s for you!  Like I have said in all my articles here, “Be creative, be you”.

Conclusion

Whatever your style is you want to make your home bar a cool place for your family and friends to hang out and make memories.  It’s not just a bar.  It’s a gathering room or area in your home where life happens.  It hurts but think about how much time and money you have spent on this place you call home.  Insane!  It’s only natural that you’d want to spend time there.  Of course you have to go out and enjoy the world around you but you always come home.

Thanks for reading. Have fun with your home bar project and don’t forget the lights.

I’ll catch you guys on the next one.

-Rob-