All Teeners,

I did a search within this list not sure this was covered previously.

I am going to demo my garage interior. install lighting, electric, heated floor, the whole deal.

My question is what is the direction to go as to the in ceiling lighting? Fluorescent is the path I was heading, though LED is getting better,

Any experience with _products_ that are working well for the people in this forum?

Thanks!
CTC911CTC

I have 9-8' florescent fixtures that hold 2 bulbs each. They use a lot of electricity so as they burn out I have been replacing the bulbs with 8' leds. They are great! I believe they use 25% of the power and they are brighter. In my opinion florescent lights shouldn't be considered.

I installed 2 8' LED lights in my 20x24 garage build last year and they're great.

LED, LED, LED!

I had florescent and swapped them for LED 4' fixtures from Home Depot. Think they were like $40-50 each. Much brighter, less energy, and lasts longer. I love them.

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I replaced all the fluorescent shop lights in my garage last year with the LED shop lights that Lowes had on sale for about $34 for a 48” unit. They were Utilitech Pro Strip Shop Light (Common: 4-ft; Actual: 6.5-in x 48-in) Item #: 595731 | Model #: MXL2006-LED2X24K840

The old fluorescent lights did not work well in the cold and were constantly burning out.

The new LED lights are simply amazing giving out much better lighting instantly. I highly recommend them to anyone!

Jeff B

I installed 2'x2' LED lights in my ceiling. I think I got them for around $65 each shipped, and I have 40 of them. Took some shopping to get that price. Yeah, seems like overkill on paper. In reality, they give me terrific lighting in the garage with no dark spots. I have them split on 3 separate switches so I can get low, med or high levels of light. You will never regret going with more lighting-especially as your eyes get older.

These lights are instant on/off, make no noise and are the equivalent of about 10 watts each in energy if I recall correctly.

Click to view attachment

An aside while you're doing the demo & picking lighting, is to see if you can get enough vertical clearance to use a 2 or 4 post lift in there too.

since you're demo'ing the the floor & ceiling, you may be able to tweak it to find enough height for the lift now or in the future. So also don't put in too deep of a ceiling & lighting system in there if you do get the height for a lift, & spoil it.

You also may have to look at where you place the lights too, in order to stay out from where the lift + car would go up.



Tom
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LED works the best and throws plenty of light. I only used (3) 4' LED in my 15' x 40' man-cave that I recently renovated.

LED are the most energy efficient today so no question here.
BUT, make sure that the fixtures you get have replaceable bulbs/tubes. The LEDs themself will last forever but the power regulators inside the bulbs are pretty low quality and burn much faster than the LED itself. If the fixture has the light element built in, you'll be hunting for matching fixtures in few years.

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At first I saw these as mounted on the garage door - then I rotated the picture.

LEDs are no doubt superior. Think perimeter for placement. Running lights down the center of a bay is a waste of lumens. If you have appropriate space, you can also install a light at ground level to aid illumination under the car. Another great convenience is a motion sensor light with the sensor aimed at the garage entry. That way you’ll always have light when you enter and leave the room and if your hands are full you won’t have to flip the switch.

Pay close attention to outlets also. Can’t have too many. Consider putting some at ground level. Also, many electricians will run multiple circuits with outlets alternated so you don’t overload when using multiple, large draw tools in the same area.

Go with a lower color temperature (in degrees Kelvin). Too much blue makes a car look ugly. IMHO.

I bought a number of LED shop lights (rectangular) at Costco - they regularly go on sale for $25. You can daisy chain 1-2 of them, and they throw excellent light. I've got 10 of them now and am quite happy at the cost/performance ratio. They are mounted on the ceiling of my shop area which is about 9" high




I have two large adjoining garage bays 30 feet deep with 24 foot ceilings that I am also looking to light, and I will likely need some LED highbays. I've eyed the "Big Ass Lights" which look to be reasonably powerful but add expense.

ctc911ctc - Yeah sorry about that. Those are on the ceiling. I have a 10' ceiling and wish it were 12'. They throw a lot of light and are all perfectly lined up. They are a flush mount and the fixture is at most 3/4" which. The end result was pretty clean.

Cal - I love the brick floor.

All I can say is our members have some very nice Man Caves.

LED is the way on the lights if you have the extra change.

As someone that has had a factory for 40 years, regular fluorescents die too fast.

In the long run, you will save plus money you get nice pictures with LED. The price is much better with LEDs now as compared to several years ago.

Bob B

I bought a Big Ass Haiku shop light 2 yrs. ago for the garage/shop, liked it so well I bought another for the woodturning shop area. With 12' ceilings it's like daylight in there now, only bad thing is they show every speck of dirt or cobwebs!

I've been a mechanical engineer for the commercial building industry for many years so have been designing lighting systems up through first magnetic then electronic ballast fluorescent, then LED's.

IMO there is no comparison LED shop fixtures are directional so do not lose lumens in the fixture housing like fluorescents. Much more efficient with more true foot candles on the workspace. Also just better light quality, you can get LED's in a wide range of kalvin temperatures so if you want to emulate incandescent bulbs get 3000 kalvin or if you want to emulate daylighting get 5000 kalvin.

10 years ago LED's were very spendy now you can get 4' LED shop light a Menards for $17.00

Tim

Please be careful mounting anything electrical below 18" in a commercial garage. National Electrical codes requires them to be explosion proof at such a low height. Residential homeowners get a break from that but I would not mount outlets or lights low in my garage at home. It is one thing to use a portable light down low or even a vacuum cleaner without much concern but permanently mounted electrical is just asking for trouble. Also don't forget the outlets need to be GFCI protected at any height in a garage.

I bought some cheap LED fixtures off of amazon for around $8 per unit. Very happy with the purchase and impressed by how much light they put out. If I owned vs. rented my place would probably consider something more permanently mounted / wired.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07DNPL2VC/

T8 bulbs gave me 959 LUX at bench height, 12 foot ceiling. I like the number but need more light. Been replacing them today with T8 LED replacement tubes. Way my fixtures are built you have to rotate the tombstones 90 degree, and rewire the fixtures. Not hard just lots of up and downs on the scaffold. I have it down to 20-30 minutes per fixture. I am 3/5s of the way done.

Result much better lighting, I went with 5000K and I have 1270 Lux in the same spot now with the LED. I will need to remeasure because that was with one bank on for the LEDs and since 1 LUX = 1 Lumen / 1 square meter additional banks of lights could factor into the measurement.

Only problem is now I see how dirty the shop is.

Thanks for that. I plan to order them for my home workshop. I have found working at the big shop, I don't need tons of light. Just decent light and a wired led that I can direct to the area I'm working on.

If you already have fluorescent fixtures in your shop Sylvania 48" 32W Equivalent Linear Cool White T8 LED Light Bulb are a drop in replacement. A 10 pack at Menards sells for $49.97. If you wait for one of their 11% off sales they are even cheaper. I have 6 8' 4 bulb each fixtures in my 3 car garage and just recently replaced all of the bulbs. Although the equivalent lums are slightly lower, 2200 vs 2450, the new bulbs appear brighter.