As the coronavirus (COVD-19) continues to spread around the world, we wanted to provide an update on our business.  Because of a stay-at-home order issued by our state governor, our office is operating with minimal staff until the first week of May.  Businesses around our country have been ordered closed, so we are doing the best we can to keep stock in place, keep up with customer e-mails, and keep up with orders while working from home and having one person at a time in the office.

So, we are still open for business, and we are still ready to help with your lighting projects in any way we can.  It may take us a little longer than normal to ship your order, though, so we thank you for your patience and support.

Please stay safe, and hopefully you can enjoy this time to break into those LEGO sets you've had on the shelf for months!

Based on customer feedback, we've streamlined our global shipping rates and policies, which means you can now get FREE SHIPPING around the world for qualifying orders.  What does qualifying orders mean?  Head on over to our Shipping Rates page to get full details.

Spring is really picking up-- so much so that we ran out of our Lighting Starter Kits for awhile.  The Light Strip and Micro Light Board starter kits are now back in stock!  We also have a very limited number of the Lighting Effect Starter Kits available, but we're having more Effect Controllers made in the next 2 weeks, so these will also be back in greater stock soon.  Thank you for your patience!

Here at Brickstuff, we often get questions along the lines of, "I just bought <x> LEGO set, and I'm wondering what lights I need to go with it.  Can you help?"

OF COURSE we can help-- we love connecting with our customers and hearing about all the awesome things they are creating!  So if you have a question about any of our products, don't hesitate to reach out and ask.

Since we often do get the same question, however, we thought it might be helpful to publish this blog post with some of the most common advice we provide.

When considering which lights you need for a given model, the most important factor to consider is: what overall effect are you hoping to achieve?  By this we don't mean lighting effect, but rather the approach you plan to take to the lighting process as a whole.  Here it is important to decide whether your goal is to add basic lighting (for example, adding general, broad light to one or more buildings), or whether you're aiming for something more detailed (for example, lighting each individual lamp in a house, headlight on a vehicle, or laser on a space ship).

If your goal is to add a large amount of general light to relatively large spaces (such as the interior of a building), your best bet is to use our Light Strips.  We offer these in packs of 2 and also in a 9-pack starter kit.  As a general rule of thumb, you'll need three Light Strips per floor of a Modular Building-sized structure (use fewer per floor if you have a smaller building, more if you have a larger building).  You can connect the Light Strips end to end, so you can expand your lighting installation or add more light at any time.  We have published an online guide that provides more ideas for using our Light Strips to light Modular Buildings (you can use these same techniques to light non-buildings as well).

If your goal is to create detail lighting (lighting individual lamps, engines, headlights, laser cannons, etc.), then our Micro Light Boards are the right solution.  As with the Light Strips, we offer these in packs of 2 and also in a starter kit.   We have published an online guide that describes how to light the Winter Village Cottage using our Micro Light Boards-- the information contained in this guide can also be useful for lighting other non-building elements (headlights, for example).  Using the process described in Step 6 of the online guide, you can gently sand the corners of the Micro Light Boards so they will fit inside 1x1 round bricks (out of the box, the Micro Light Boards will fit inside 1x1 non-round bricks).

So, to summarize: there is no one "right" way to light your creations.  Depending on the type of effect you are seeking, you will benefit from using either our Light Strips or our Micro Light Boards (or both, if you want to light both general areas and detailed spaces).  For models like Technic models, space ships, and the like, you will probably want to use the Micro Light Boards.

No matter your approach or what you're hoping to light up, the easiest way to get started is to use one of our starter kits-- these include everything you'll need to be up and running quickly, and since everything in the Brickstuff system is modular, you can easily expand or adjust your installation (or your approach) at any time.

We hope this information has been helpful.  If you have additional specific questions, we'd be happy to help!  Just send us a note via our Contact page and we'll be in touch.

Last night, we were fortunate to be a guest on Joshua Hanlon's excellent webcast, Beyond the Brick.  You can watch the webcast by clicking here.  Joshua was a great host, and it was great to be able to share (and show!) more information about our products.

This was Rob's first webcast, so he really didn't know what to expect.  The hours leading up to the webcast were a little crazy as furniture was re-arranged, computers were moved, and LEGO models were shuffled to create a good on-screen appearance.  There are always things you don't plan for, like a squeaky desk chair that forces you to put on a geeky headset at the last minute, but overall it was a great experience.  Since the webcast, we've had some great follow-up from builders asking great questions.

The experience has shown that people really want to see more of our product in action, to see it being installed, and to see more examples of the kinds of results you can obtain using our lights.  We're going to be launching a series of short YouTube videos soon to provide more of this hands-on visibility.  Since we've already had our first webcast, it's time to get over our virtual stage fright and put ourselves out there!

What kinds of information and demos would you like to see?  Let us know, and we'll do our best to get the word out.  Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to use our products, so let us know what would make thing