Lite Brite | Gyllen Mood Light

Materials: 2 Gyllen Flower Panels, 2 Dioder Flexible Light Strips, 8 Ikea Mirror Hanging Brackets

Description: On a recent trip to Ikea (we are lucky to have 2 Ikeas within 20 minutes of our place), I noticed something that I thought would look neat on either side of our TV – a Gyllen Light Panel (flower pattern).

Unfortunately, the standard light fixture that goes behind them uses a large metal box that sticks out quite a few inches. Since our TV is basically in a hallway, those metal boxes would be quite an eyesore, and far from ‘low profile.’ (Plus, I am clumsy and I’m sure I’d end up knocking them off the wall and into a thousand shards of glass.)

Enter: The Dioder flexible LED light system. The packs come in either multi-color (the lights can stay a solid color, or fade between colors), or clear. We picked up 2 multi-color packs and 2 Gyllen glass panels.

The last dilemma of how to mount the glass panels to the wall was easily solved by simply asking an Ikea salesperson for any extra mirror mounting brackets. Turns out that they keep extra mounting brackets on hand when mirrors are broken in the store for the specific purpose of giving them to customers with broken brackets. A minute later, I had 8 *free* brackets.

When we got home, I quickly discovered that the glass panels wouldn’t look that great on either side of the TV. Hubs had an idea to stack the panels over the TV, which also didn’t look that great. Then we discovered that the two of them pushed together fit perfectly across the wall, with a 1/2 inch to spare.

Mounting the glass panels was simple – just line up 2 brackets on the top and bottom of each panel (4 brackets per panel), and screw them into the wall. We used drywall anchors since our wall studs were MIA where we needed them.

Dioder lights were SO EASY to install – you literally peel the paper off the back and stick the light strip to the wall, and cut them to size on the pre-marked cut lines. Crazy simple.

The end result is pretty awesome and modern. We love having the ability to set ‘mood lighting’ at any time for movie nights, too.

See more of the mood lighting over at digital dutchess.

~ Amanda, Chicago