Finished the Zelda lighting scene in my game room just in time for the remake

Reading this brought me right back to when I built my own themed corner two years ago, except mine went the other direction thematically. I did a moonlit Zora's Domain vibe with cool blues and a hint of teal behind a fish tank stand where my old N64 still lives. The breathing effect was the piece I got wrong at first. I had it set too fast and my wife said it looked like a police car outside the window, so I stretched it way out untill it cycles maybe every eight seconds or so. Much better.

Agree on the diffuser channel completly. My first attempt used bare strips stuck to the back of a bookshelf and the individual LEDs showed up as dotted lines on the wall. I picked up some aluminum channel with a frosted cover from the local hardware place and it turned the dots into a smooth wash. For hiding wiring, I ran mine inside a paintable raceway along the baseboard and painted it to match the wall. Not as clever as your vented box idea, but it disappears completely. One thing I would suggest is labeling your presets well, because I have a dozen scenes saved now and half of them are near duplicates from fiddling late at night. My Metroid-themed fallback scene has been sitting there unnamed for months.

My setup took a diffrent path and ended up being less about one big preset. I run three small scenes on a schedule instead. Morning gaming gets a pale sky blue at low output, evening is a warm campfire orange, and late night is basically candlelight, barely brighter than a nightlight. The scheduled shift happened by accident when I left a scene on the wrong setting and realized the room felt off, so I leaned into it. My kids now call the evening one soup mode, which has stuck.

The other difference is I gave up on diffuser channels and just bounced everything off the wall instead. I mounted my strips a couple of inches out from the surface behind a wooden headboard-style frame, aimed at the plaster, and the wall itself does the diffusing. Costs nothing, and repainting a wall is easier than hunting down aluminum channels that match. One practical thing I learned the hard way: cheap strips drift in color over a year or two. Mine started as a proper campfire orange and slowly went salmon. Buy one spare set now, park it in the closet, and your scene stays accurate when the first set fades.

Wires are always the headache. Back in the day, we just used a basic power strip or taped a box to the wall and didn't worry about all these complicated hidden setups. If you're running a whole bunch of these strips, make sure your power bricks are rated for the total amperage. It's usally just a low draw, but it is annoying to spend so much time chasing every single cable along the baseboard when you could have just run it in the wall straight away.

I appreciate the suggestion regarding naming your saved presets since I find that even with a relatively small collection of scenes, the lack of organization quickly leads to confusion when the ambient light levels change. Regarding the color scheme, I noticed your use of pure green behind the TV, which is a strong saturated color, and I wonder if you considered experimenting with a warmer amber undertone mixed into that primary green for the backlight. Mixing a touch of yellow into the RGB values often results in a more organic, softer glow that minimizes that artificial look sometimes inherent in heavily saturated LED washes.