tsbrewers

Okay, my van is an '06 and it is my work van. When I got it, it only had the single dome light in the back, and with no windows at all, it was very dark in there. First thing I did was add 2 more dome lights from a junk yard and swapped in some LED bulbs. This helped but still a little dark.

Well I had some of those peel-n-stick led strips that I picked up from Amazon for $8 for 16'. I wired up some JST connectors on the ends of the strips and on the van's dome light wires and added a strip to each roof truss.

So here are some pics. First few are during the day so you can see the setup, the last couple are at night showing how lit up the back now is.

JST connectors (sorry for the blur)





Light strips stuck to trusses,





Pictures at night showing the light output,





So not bad for about $10 and about an hour of time. Here are the lights I used from amazon, one strip was flaky one morning, but has been fine since.

canucklehead

Nice.

darkgoatracer

that's pretty sweet, especially for the price. the 12 volt flourescents work well too but there like 120$.

dberladyn

I like it. I want to add recessed lights to the bottom of the doors, so that in the winter, when I open the doors early in the morning the ground lights up too. Just another thing to add to my list, although on the same token I want to do things as cheap and cost effective as possible.

What you are doing with your doors.... that is the only thing I regret about having a slider. If I had barn doors I would definitely be setting up small shelving on them for easy storage. Nice and easy to access with the doors open. The sliding door kind of screws me for that.

I like the broom mount, I think you just solved a problem for me. Although I need to store three, not one.

jamespsj

Good fix, very resourceful way of lighting your van interior. The LED strips are definitely a bright alternative to fluorescents.

KONNMAN

LOOKS Awesome!!! can you show how you connected everything.

Bluewhale

Nice. I recently did something similar with COB LED's

dberladyn

I was looking at COB lighting and I am glad I can compare the two. The strip lighting actually looks more uniform and it's lights all the cracks and crevices. Not to mention the color temperature looks nicer. I have factory LED's in the back, but they are a little disappointing as GM chose bluish cheaper LED's instead of higher quality more natural temperatures.

Bluewhale

True, but you also have to consider the fact that he has double the amount of lighting and interior is white and white diffuses light better.

dberladyn

You make a good point. I now realize my van is going to get much darker once I install the gray plastic wall liners.