Ambient interior lighting

Dsemaj

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 3, 2006
Messages
2,955
Location
Adelaide, Australia.
Car(s)
2003 Urabus Impreza WRX, 1997 Fraud Falcs EL Wagon
I love the glow of red on my instruments in my E34, but I really like how Audi and some newer BMWs have done ambient interior lighting. It would be fantastic to have some discrete LED lights glowing in my interior, lighting up the footwell and maybe some that would glow on the center console. I've been reading about people recreating this in older cars, but I can't really find any write ups or anything.

Anyone done this to a car? What would I have to do to create the same thing? I've got a month break from Uni, I need projects! :lol:

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If you do that red shit, I will negative rep you every post you make from now to infinity. :lol:


There are some interior mini-neon lights you can buy at auto-parts stores that are a pretty simple install.
 
The light bulbs on my shifter console are all out...so at night I have to guess whether I am in N or D :) It is a nuisance.
 
If you do that red shit, I will negative rep you every post you make from now to infinity. :lol:


There are some interior mini-neon lights you can buy at auto-parts stores that are a pretty simple install.

I was talking about discrete! :( I guess you're not a fan of mood lighting, go blow up some apex seals! :p

Apparently now I've stumped across people with these so called "kits" that you wire up, so that they can come on and off with your interior lights. I hate tackiness, so could be an option

Those mini-neon lights plug into cigarette lighters, yeah? Bit tacky.
 
I've done something similar; I had an old Jeep with effectively no footwell lighting. The pathetic dome light's illumination didn't reach down there, and therefore it was black as pitch at night despite the fact that AMC had put tiny little bulbs down there - all they did was emit a useless glow.

I installed some Pacer Industries-built (no AMC puns, please) LED arrays in the footwells and wired them into the electrical system in place of the old useless lights. Even if the car hadn't had lights down there, wiring them up to go on and off with the interior lights would have been trivial - no kit needed.

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Obviously, you can hide them a little bit better in a car that doesn't have an underslung air conditioning system.

They weren't very expensive, either. Cost about $18 USD each. Of course, I didn't use red, though they are available in that color. I plan on getting some more to stick in the Series III which has no footwell lighting at all.

Anything that plugs into a cigarette lighter can have the plug chopped off and wired directly into the electrical system. You need not worry about that, if your desired lighting fixture only has that plug instead of bare wires to solder/crimp in.
 
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I went the easy way and replaced my SEAT interior light with one from the Passat W8 which has two ambient lights:

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Hooray for 1-fits-all VAG ;)
 
I really like the subtle lighting in the S-Class, but those red pictures are way too much.

http://img4.imageshack.**/img4/7146/sp3220051226233301.jpg
 
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