After living in our Airstream full-time for about 4 months last year, we realized how hard it is to relax under all the glare from the LED puck lights. The photo above is taken from the point of view of a person sitting in the dinette of a Caravel 22FB and is looking towards the TV, trying to relax after a long day of exploring. Notice the brightness and glare of the ceiling puck lights. We found ourselves often turning the ceiling lights off and either using the more indirect light from the kitchen or turning on the lights only in the bathroom while partially closing the bathroom door to get some sort of indirect, softer light.
We spoke to a lot of fellow Airstreamers we met on the road as we traveled coast to coast, and it seemed that most people were not so fond of the glare or even worse, the cold blue-toned LED lighting in their older model Airstreams.
We thought that some solution must exist to solve the glare problem, but we couldn't find any. So we decided to take a stab at creating a minimal solution to diffuse the light. First, let's define the problem. The way we see this issue is twofold:
1. Light Direction: The bright, highly directional glare from the LED puck lights. Those puck lights are in almost all modern Airstream trailers. This glare can cause headaches or general discomfort to some people.
2. Light Color: The cold bluish-white color of the light from earlier Airstream LED's. The color of the light coming from those LED's has been often described as that of a surgical room. Not very conducive to relaxing.
The solution for the first problem is a way to diffuse the light the same way a lampshade diffuses the glare from a bare bulb in a light fixture. We designed a lightweight shade that can be quickly attached to the Airstream puck lights without any tools. We call it AirShade.
Our patented design allows you to attach AirShade to your puck light in 1-2 minutes without using any tools.
Here's a sneak peak on how easy it is to get soft light in your Airstream using AirShade:
The solution for the second problem, as mentioned multiple times in Airstream forums and groups, is to insert warm colored gel inside your LED to change the color of the light to a more pleasant warm tone. This solution works great. The only problem is that there's an overwhelming variety of gel colors, densities and brands that it can be take some guesswork to figure out which gel to order.
We tried many different colors of gels and settled on a very light orange gel that can be stacked in multiple layers to make the light warmer. We offer it pre-cut to match the size of the puck light. Since warmth of the light is an objective issue, we wanted you to decide how warm your lights can be. Insert only one gel for a very slight change of temperature. Add more gels for warmer color. We think most people would be satisfied with their light color with somewhere between 2-4 gels in each light.
Here's a video to show you how easy it is to add gels to your puck lights:
We currently ship the warming gels in a pack of 30 pre cut gels. Depending on how warm you prefer your lights, one pack of gels is enough to warm 7-15 LED puck lights.
It's worth mentioning that making the light warmer by adding orange gels does 2 things: It changes the color of the light and reduces the brightness of the light, not a whole lot, but you do lose some light intensity. What the gel does not do is reduce the glare. That's something the AirShade resolves.
Here's a photo of the warm lights without AirShade:
And here's the same space with AirShade on, notice how the shadow of the hat on the door is almost invisible now(compared to the photo above), this is an evidence that light is more evenly dispersed making it easier on your eyes:
Here's another photo without AirShade:
And here's with AirShade:
What is your experience with lights in your Airstream? Let us know in the comments section below.