Indirect light around the edge of the room, from an aluminum cove we extrude, bend and install ourselves. The ceiling appears to float, and there is no fixture anywhere in the sightline.
Cove and perimeter lighting puts the light source in a recessed aluminum channel around the edge of the room and aims it up and out, so what you see is a lit ceiling and a floating edge instead of a fixture. There is no lens, no trim ring, no lamp in anyone’s field of view. Eco Ceiling builds this with three purpose-made extrusions, AP-301, AP-302 and AP-302-W, filled with 24V LED and closed with a tensioned stretch membrane. We extrude, bend, fabricate and install all of it ourselves out of our shop in Dania Beach, Florida, with our own CNC for the curves.
It beats a run of recessed downlights for three reasons that show up on every job. First, indirect light hides ceiling imperfection: a wash that leaves the surface at a shallow angle is replaced by soft bounced light that does not rake every taping seam and every dent into visibility, which matters enormously on a large flat ceiling in a hotel or a lobby. Second, there is nothing to see and nothing to align, so the ceiling reads as one clean plane instead of a grid of holes that has to coordinate with sprinklers, diffusers and speakers. Third, it is glare-free by construction: nobody looks at the emitter, so the room can be bright without anything in it being harsh. Because we bend the aluminum in-house, the cove is not limited to straight rectangles. It can follow a curve, close on itself around an oval, or run vertically down a wall.
Light that leaves a source at a shallow angle across a surface exposes every taping seam, every fastener dimple and every small wave. A cove throws up and out, so the ceiling is lit by soft bounced light instead of raked light. On a large flat ceiling in a lobby, a corridor or an open office, this is the difference between a plane that reads flat and one that shows every day of its construction. It is also why a cove is often the right call on a renovation where the existing ceiling is not perfect and there is no budget to make it perfect.
The emitter sits inside an aluminum channel aimed away from every normal viewing angle. Nobody looks at the LED, so the room can be bright without anything in it being harsh. That matters most where people spend time looking up: a treatment chair, a hotel bed, a conference table with a screen at the end of it. It also removes the coordination fight, because there is no downlight grid to align with sprinklers, diffusers, speakers and returns.
The cove is aluminum we extrude and bend on our own CNC in Dania Beach. A curve, an oval, a closed loop, a vertical run down a feature wall: all the same job to us, and all quoted from the same shop. Tile and panel manufacturers work in rectangles and you design around their module. We work from your drawing and cut to it. One drawing set, one crew, Florida lead times, and on a large commercial project a full-scale mockup before you commit.
The spaces where we install this system most.
The ceiling plane has to read as one clean surface, and no downlight glare is allowed in the guest sightline.
Indirect uplight on faces, with no reflection in the table and none in the screen at the end of it.
Living rooms, primary bedrooms and hallways, usually 2700K on a dimmer as the base light layer.
Medical, dental and med-spa rooms where patients look up at the ceiling from a chair. Retail and showroom perimeters where the cove defines the room shape and the product lighting stays separate. Restaurants and clubs where a tunable-white or RGBW cove takes the room from lunch to dinner without touching a fixture.
A cove is an aluminum detail first and a lighting product second. Here is the assembly in the order it goes up.
We take your reflected ceiling plan and produce a dimensioned shop drawing for every run: cove depth, setback from the wall, corner conditions, feed points, driver locations and the exact profile code at each condition. Nothing gets cut until that drawing comes back approved. This is the step that separates a cove that reads as architecture from a cove that reads as a trim accident.
Three extrusions cover almost every cove condition, all 6063 aluminum in white powder coat or mill finish, 6.5 ft stock lengths.
DWG and PDF for all three are on the downloads list below, so the detail goes straight into your section.
Curves, radii, closed loops and irregular room shapes are bent on our own CNC in Dania Beach, not ordered in and waited on. A radiused cove around an oval lobby or a curved bulkhead comes out of our shop as one smooth bent piece instead of a series of mitered facets. This is the single reason we can quote geometry that panel and tile manufacturers cannot.
The profile is anchored to solid backing: stud, blocking, hat channel or the ceiling structure. On a perimeter run we require continuous blocking behind the profile line, because the aluminum carries membrane tension for the life of the ceiling and a fastener into board alone will eventually telegraph.
24V constant voltage tape is set into the profile channel on its own carrier, so the tape is straight and consistent instead of following whatever wave the installer’s thumb produced. Available at 2700K, 3000K, 3500K, 4000K, 5000K, 6500K, tunable white 2700-6500K, or RGBW. We specify strips rated CRI 90+ by their manufacturer. Dimming and control on 0-10V, DALI-2, DMX, or Casambi-type wireless where the project calls for it.
Everything above the membrane, from driver to LED, is low voltage. Drivers do not live above the ceiling with no way to reach them. They sit in an accessible location we agree on during shop drawings: a closet, above a cabinet, an electrical room, or behind a service hatch. Low-voltage home runs go from each cove segment back to that location. This gets designed at drawing stage, not discovered at rough-in.
Every run is powered and checked before any membrane goes on. Color consistency across the run, dimming from full to the low end, control response, no dead segments. Finding a bad tape section with the ceiling open takes minutes. Finding it after is a different day.
The stretch membrane clips into the harpoon channel and is tensioned to the profile line, which is what gives the cove its knife edge. Nominal 8 mil PVC, 7 to 10 mil depending on finish, in matte, satin, gloss or mirror. On a cove the membrane is normally the ceiling plane being lit, not the lit element itself, because the ceiling above the cove is the surface doing the work. Where the design calls for the cove face itself to glow, we run a translucent membrane over the channel instead.
The membrane releases from the harpoon and re-tensions, so a driver swap or a tape section replacement years from now does not mean cutting and patching a ceiling. That is a real difference from a hard-lid cove built out of drywall.
Start with the four numbers that decide whether a cove looks expensive or looks like a mistake. Every number below is our shop standard, derived from our own installs rather than from laboratory data.
Shop standard is 4 to 6 inches from the top of the LED tape to the underside of the ceiling above. Under 3 inches the tape is too close to the surface it lights and you get a hard bright band at the top with fast falloff below it, so the ceiling looks striped rather than glowing. At 4 to 6 inches the beam has room to open and the gradient runs 24 to 36 inches out onto the ceiling. Above 8 inches you get a soft even wash but you start losing brightness on the ceiling and the cove reads as a dark slot in daytime, which some architects want and some hate. Tell us which look you want and we will set the depth in shop drawings before anything is cut.
Shop standard is 3 to 5 inches from the LED to the wall face for a ceiling wash, and 1 to 2 inches for a wall graze. This is the single number that decides grazing versus washing. Get it wrong on site and the only fix is moving aluminum.
For a continuous unbroken line of light with no scallop, run high-density 24V tape. Shop standard is 120 LEDs per meter or denser, and we prefer a COB-style continuous emitter for anything the eye can see directly or anything reflected in a gloss membrane or a polished stone wall. At 60 LEDs per meter you will see individual dots when the tape is closer than about 4 inches to the surface. Dot spacing plus distance to surface is what causes scallops, not the driver. Anywhere the tape is within 3 inches of the lit surface, go continuous emitter or accept scallops.
On 24V, shop standard is 16 feet 5 inches maximum per feed. Past that the far end of the run goes visibly warmer and dimmer, and on a 60 foot perimeter you will see it as a gradient around the room. We power long perimeters from both ends or inject power at intervals so the whole loop reads as one brightness. Never let an installer daisy-chain a whole room off one corner feed.
This is the constraint that gets designed around too late. Drivers cannot live buried above the membrane with no way in. Every driver on an Eco cove sits in an accessible location: a closet, above a cabinet, in a nearby soffit with an access hatch, or an electrical room. Everything from the driver out to the LED is low voltage. Give us a driver home on the plan set and we will run the low-voltage home runs to it. Rule of thumb for planning: allow roughly one driver per 30 to 40 feet of cove depending on tape wattage, and put them where a hand can reach without touching the ceiling.
A perimeter cove that returns on itself has four inside corners, and a corner is where the light doubles up and reads hot if the tape wraps tight. Shop standard is to stop the tape 1 to 2 inches short of the corner on both legs and let the two washes overlap on the ceiling instead of at the aluminum. On a curved or closed-loop cove we bend AP-301 or AP-302 on our own CNC to the radius on the drawing, so there is no mitered kink and no corner hot spot to begin with.
In order of how often we see it: tape too close to the ceiling, meaning depth under 3 inches; low-density tape near a surface; mixing tape reels from different production batches on the same visible run, which shows as a color step at the joint; corners where two runs wrap tight; and dimming two different driver models on one run so they hold slightly different low-end levels. We buy one batch for one job and keep driver models consistent across a room.
24V constant voltage, dimmable on 0-10V, DALI-2 or DMX, and Casambi-type wireless where the project calls for it. CCT options are 2700K, 3000K, 3500K, 4000K, 5000K and 6500K, plus tunable white 2700-6500K and RGBW. For a cove, pick the control protocol early, because 0-10V needs a home run to the dimmer and DALI needs a bus, and both are easier to rough in than to add later. Practical note: a cove looks best when it can go low. Specify drivers rated for deep dimming, because the number on a driver datasheet and what your eye reads on a white ceiling at 5 percent are two different things. On a large commercial project we confirm the low end with a mockup first.
Indirect uplight is forgiving of a flat, matte, light ceiling and unforgiving of anything else. A gloss or high-sheen surface above a cove will show the tape as a mirrored line. Standard white matte drywall or a matte stretch membrane is the right surface to wash. If the ceiling above is dark, expect a large drop in bounced light, because the cove is lighting the room by reflection and the reflectance of that surface matters more than anything else in the detail.
AP-301 and AP-302 sit in the same drawing set as our AP-305, AP-306 and AP-307 linear light profiles and our AP-212 and AP-213 LuxForm shapes, so a room can carry a perimeter halo, a recessed linear line and a luminous form on one submittal, one shop drawing package and one install crew.
On a large commercial project where the cove is the primary light layer, we build a physical mockup at the real depth, real setback, real tape and real driver in our Dania Beach shop or on site. Depth and setback are cheap to change on a mockup and expensive to change after the aluminum is up.
Shop standard is 4 to 6 inches from the LED to the ceiling above. Under 3 inches you get a hard bright band and a striped look. Over 8 inches the wash gets very soft but the ceiling gets dimmer and the slot reads darker in daylight. We set the exact number on the shop drawing based on the look you want and how far the light needs to travel.
3 to 5 inches for a soft ceiling wash, 1 to 2 inches for a wall graze that pulls texture out of stone or plaster. That one dimension is the difference between the two looks. Decide it before fabrication, because after the aluminum is installed the only way to change it is to move the aluminum.
No, and we will not fake one. We are a fabricator and installer, not a photometric laboratory. We hold no accredited photometric laboratory report for this assembly, so we publish no light output figures for it. What we can do is give you the exact LED product data from the strip manufacturer for your calculation, give you a dimensioned section of the cove detail, and on a large commercial project build a full-scale mockup at the real depth and setback so you can measure and see it for yourself before you commit. Most architects find the mockup settles the question faster than a calculation does.
Shop standard on 24V is 16 feet 5 inches per feed. Longer than that and the far end reads dimmer and slightly warmer. On long perimeters we feed from both ends or inject power at intervals so the whole loop reads as one brightness. There is no limit on how long the cove itself can be, only on how far one feed can push.
Somewhere a person can reach. A closet, above a cabinet, an electrical room, or a soffit with an access hatch. Drivers are the one component that will eventually need service, so they never get buried above a membrane. Everything from the driver out to the LED is low voltage. Plan for roughly one driver per 30 to 40 feet of cove and mark the location on the reflected ceiling plan.
Yes. Tunable white 2700-6500K and RGBW are both available, dimmable and controlled on 0-10V, DALI-2, DMX or Casambi-type wireless. Pick the protocol during rough-in, because 0-10V needs a home run and DALI needs a bus, and both are much easier to install before the ceiling closes.
Tested to ASTM E84, per finish, on white specimens: gloss 5 flame spread and 300 smoke developed, matte 10 and 300, satin 15 and 250. The laboratory assigned no classification. The specimens were not mounted as an installed ceiling assembly, and the test is of the membrane alone rather than of a ceiling and plenum assembly. On this data it is not permitted in return-air plenums. We will send the full report on request so your code consultant can read it directly rather than take our summary for it.
10 years on the membrane, 3 years on LED and electrical. Because the membrane is a clip-in system, a driver or a tape section can be reached later by releasing and re-tensioning the membrane rather than cutting and patching the ceiling.
What we do not have, said plainly: we hold no accredited photometric laboratory report and no acoustic laboratory data for this assembly, so we publish no light output figures and no acoustic figures for it. We will not publish either until an accredited laboratory report exists. In the meantime we send LED strip manufacturer data and a dimensioned cove section, and on a large commercial project we build a full-scale mockup you can stand under.
Tile and panel manufacturers sell rectangular modules that have to be laid into a plane, so a cove becomes something you build around their product. We fabricate the cove itself on our own CNC in Dania Beach, in any curve or closed loop, on ceilings and on walls, and we hand over one drawing set and one crew that owns the aluminum, the LED, the membrane and the install.
Our profile cross-sections, dimensions and the full color chart live in the technical library. CAD files are sent on request, usually within one business day.
Send a floor plan or photos and tell us the mood you want. We reply the same day with a layout, a budget and honest advice.
Share a few details and our team will follow up within one business day.
