Mood lighting to your legacy?

[MarkSubi]

Has anybody added mood lighting to there interior before on here? As in like how you can set the middle map light to turn on when you open the door, I want to do something like that but where you have a light bulb or two somehow underneath the dash on both sides and have them also turn on when the door is open except I'd like to know if it would be possible to do that to where you can make them come on slowly as in like dim on I guess is a better way of saying it?

[amgarrety]

Has anybody added mood lighting to there interior before on here? As in like how you can set the middle map light to turn on when you open the door, I want to do something like that but where you have a light bulb or two somehow underneath the dash on both sides and have them also turn on when the door is open except I'd like to know if it would be possible to do that to where you can make them come on slowly as in like dim on I guess is a better way of saying it?

As long as you have LEDs, dimming shouldn't be a problem. It might not be a problem with incandescent bulbs either, but 99% of the lights you'll be looking at will be LED.

There are two ways you could go about this. It is my assumption that the dome light is controlled by the 12v wire only, so the dimming effect of that light might be controlled by how much power it gets. In that case, you can get your power directly from that wire to control your lights. The only problem is when you want to use that lighting without a dome light, and that can still be done, but that requires a much more in depth explanation. You just have to think about power sources relating to the functions you want.

You could also hook it to the wire that tells your car that there is a door ajar. Whenever that comes on, have it hooked up to a small micro-controller to slowly give your LEDs power. That method is much more involved but would save you having to run wires up to your dome light.

[MarkSubi]

Wait so I could hook up the wire of the under dash lighting to witch ever wire controls the door ajair switch? If I'm able to do that then I'd love to do so. I normally don't use the dome light, as in I normally don't have the switch set to let it come on when my door is open, mainly because its just the regular bulb got that and with the fact at how bright it is but I'd love to have the mood lighting without always having the dome night on as well. Idk I was messing with my moms buick rendezvous today and loved how it had that and I know that feature as to be in other luxury cars of newer years. I do want to make my car kind of VIP at some point so this would be a cool thing to do.

[ags18]

The newer 05+ Mustang's actually have a cool system that can interchange between 5-6 different colors and are very subtle.

I've always loved how E36 BMW's had 2-Orange/Red SMALL! LED lights that shine down on the shifter area. They dont glare or get in the way of anything.

[SilverSuby]

They make dome light bulb replacements that consist of about 9 LEDs and fit right in. I have mine in red but the only problem is they give a fair amount less light output then the old bulb.
-Logan

[stoggy]

I have footwell lighting in my 02 BE. I ran a power and a ground wire from the dome light so that the footwell lighting will come on with any door open as well as 'fade to black' like factory. I jumped one step further and wired in 2 relays to allow the lights to be activated via a hidden switch whether the car is on or off and all the doors are closed.

[MarkSubi]

I have footwell lighting in my 02 BE. I ran a power and a ground wire from the dome light so that the footwell lighting will come on with any door open as well as 'fade to black' like factory. I jumped one step further and wired in 2 relays to allow the lights to be activated via a hidden switch whether the car is on or off and all the doors are closed.


Dude nice that's exactly what I want.