Garage Lighting - Looking for recommendations

Oneheadlite

Oneheadlite

Member
I swear the builder for our house never put any thought into using the garage for anything other than parking - 3 oddly spaced screw in light bulb bases and one 2 place outlet on one wall (plus one in the ceiling for the opener).

Finally looking to move forward with making the garage a more pleasant / less stressful place to work. First up will be fixing the lighting situation. Looking to have a really good permanent lighting setup to reduce my reliance on portable lighting (which, no matter what I try the garage refuses to let be effective).

Planning on doing some iteration of LED strip lighting, whether it`s fluorescent style dual light fixtures or some sort of 4 foot LED strip units. Garage is a pretty standard 3 car. Walls are sheet-rocked and painted white. Open ceiling with plywood above for in-rafter storage.


What are you all using for fixtures, and what kind of placement?

Anything you did but looking back would do differently?

Anyone have strip lighting on the side walls?


Thanks!
 
I bought two sets of Barrina LED T5 lights, they`re just plug and play. You can mount them or move them as-needed. Check out what some people have been doing with them on YouTube.
 
I put in a series of LED light strips in the ceiling of my 2-car garage a few years ago at the same time we wired up a section of the attic and put in plywood so we could use it for storage.

The strips seem to be about the same length as what your describing. I have a two car garage so I placed two of the strips running on each side of the garage running parallel to the long walls (i.e. parallel to the direction the vehicles park. I also mounted two strips parallel to the back wall (i.e. opposite the garage door). Those along the side walls are aligned towards the back of the garage so the light isn`t blocked when the garage door is open.

If I had to do it over again, I would have mounted an additional two fixtures across the end with the door in order to better light up that area when the door is closed. As-is, I get lots of shadows and it`s a little dark.

Even with all that light I still find myself turning them off and using an LED work light stand when polishing. However, when doing interiors or even applying LSP`s it`s plenty of light and being slightly diffused helps with seeing things like haze from a sealant or a coating flash.

I don`t think I`d go with lighting on the walls simply because having lights on a stand gives me the flexibility to move it around and catch the best angle to see my work regardless of paint color of vehicle size.

My walls too are sheetrock and painted some horrible, cheap, white, contractor grade, paint. Some day when I`m REALLY ambitious and have plenty of free time, I might paint them a medium/dark gray to cut down on reflections.
 
Rasky had some good recommendations a few years ago when he was building out his garage. Here`s a link I saved from that: https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=289441

I don`t know what your ceiling height is, and I`m not sure if I understood if you have open rafters or not, but I`m not a fan of the integral LED`s where you can`t change a bulb and have to change the whole fixture--50,000 hours may sound like a lot, but a lot of LED`s seem to get prematurely dim. Maybe if you have the "plug-in" lights it`s not such a big deal, but if you`re hardwired it`s kind of a pain. I would lean toward the "LED-ready" fixtures that take the T8 LED bulbs...then you can always change the color or the lumens easily.
 
Here’s what I went with in my shop. We’ll see if it works out long term,
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Setec Astronomy said:
Rasky had some good recommendations a few years ago when he was building out his garage. Here`s a link I saved from that: https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=289441

I don`t know what your ceiling height is, and I`m not sure if I understood if you have open rafters or not, but I`m not a fan of the integral LED`s where you can`t change a bulb and have to change the whole fixture--50,000 hours may sound like a lot, but a lot of LED`s seem to get prematurely dim. Maybe if you have the "plug-in" lights it`s not such a big deal, but if you`re hardwired it`s kind of a pain. I would lean toward the "LED-ready" fixtures that take the T8 LED bulbs...then you can always change the color or the lumens easily.
Click to expand...

This what i’m looking for but hard to find.... any recommendations?


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Coatings=crack said:
This what i’m looking for but hard to find.... any recommendations?
Click to expand...

For "LED-ready" fixtures? Rasky had recommended Bee`s Lighting, I`m not sure what they have now for that, but it seems over time that a lot of the bulbs they have are sold only in case qty. Another place is 1000bulbs, but their shipping costs are horrible.

PS If you are using 4` T8 LED`s, you have to decide on single-end or double-end power, I guess if you get a double-end fixture, then you can use single-end bulbs also.
 
One thought is to make sure the fixtures are easy to replace. While LEDs claim to last forever their QC is really bad. Some do last a long time, others make it a year for me.

Has anyone here tried the screw in bulbs that look like a satellite?
 
I also went to garage journal through raskys recommendation
I went with these fixtures. They were recommended on garage journal
Keystone bulbs
I have a 3 car 46 wide 28 deep osb on walls and ceiling’s. Plenty of light. Haven’t seen any shadows. Lights are hard wired
1 switch for each bay by the entrance door
Got everything from Atlantic lighting
Can’t remember why. I guess they were the cheapest 2 years ago. Hope this helps 26 total fixtures
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e17e3469be9a217543ff4ca9c8908e4e.jpg



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
If you are looking for info on those "as-seen-on-TV" LED winged lights for garages that can be used in conventional light bulb sockets, here`s a link to thread discussion about them:
https://www.autopia.org/forums/the-man-cave/192185-garage-light-seen-tv.html?highlight=lights

Bottom line on this light bulb replacement is: good for general garage illumination, so-so for seeing initial vehicle surface imperfections inspection assessments or correction/polishing swirls or imperfection removal.

I also point out that your garage wall and ceiling color can play a huge factor in "seeing" these surface imperfections. White walls and ceilings with new LED lighting tend to "wash out" visualization due to the brightly reflected lighting from brighter sun-like (5000K temps or hue, if you will). Pro detailers are using a dark grey paint hue on walls to "tone it down" a bit and a lighter grey hue on ceilings to still reflect the light down A far cry from the white walls and ceilings with fluorescent lights mentality for more brightness. Something to think about if building a new garage or a new home with a garage and using it for vehicle detailing! OR do like RaskyR1, turn off those LED garage lights, and use just your inspection detailing LED lights and leave the garage walls white.
Reference: https://www.autopia.org/forums/prof...ssion/187398-black-walls.html?highlight=black
 
I still have my 18, - 4ft - 2-tube - F32 - T8 Daylight tube fixtures in a 2-1/2 car garage that is all insulated, finished drywall, painted, walls and ceiling.. Like this beautiful example above of Fishroes, I turn them on and it`s Daylight in there all the time...

To not lose all that potential storage above the garage I installed a pull down step ladder and went up there and screwed down a lot of 3/4" plywood between the studs ceiling, lighting, and have a lot of stuff stored up there. Bought the pull down step ladder arrangement from H/Depot..

Don`t seem to have an issue with too bright a light to see my paint corrections, so I am good with that.. Perhaps all LED lighting might be too bright, I don`t know.

I also use 2 big Scangrip Multimatch lights on stands that extend high, and make all work on the sides of a vehicle and the roof if needed, so much easier..

And with all this light inside, I still prefer to clean the entire Interior, Trunk, engine and compartment, outside in the sun.. :)

For me, nothing will ever beat That light for really seeing everything especially inside a vehicle, so I can really get all the dirt out of it, down to the carpeting..

I run all 18 of those lights on 1- 20 amp circuit breaker, and have never had issues with it.. I wired them all together under the ceiling, all wiring carefully stapled to the ceiling, nice straight runs, so I can See All the wiring, and catch something sooner if it ever happens.. Hate reading about those garage fires that burned the house down.. :(

I run all the other equipment in the garage (Steamer, Extractor, Rotary, Scangrips, on separately wired 20 amp breakers on 12awg romex I installed in the garage..

Have moved all those lights to 6 different garages over the years; and hopefully I don`t have to do this again..
Dan F
 
Fishroes said:
I also went to garage journal through raskys recommendation
I went with these fixtures. They were recommended on garage journal
Keystone bulbs
I have a 3 car 46 wide 28 deep osb on walls and ceiling’s. Plenty of light. Haven’t seen any shadows. Lights are hard wired
1 switch for each bay by the entrance door
Got everything from Atlantic lighting
Can’t remember why. I guess they were the cheapest 2 years ago. Hope this helps 26 total fixtures
c51b997ed4e851d4a1b27329023f89fc.jpg

5c43ed643fa05f8280d54c45bd82f10b.jpg

8123b64946bd3381dcd9363c4d358ec7.jpg

e17e3469be9a217543ff4ca9c8908e4e.jpg



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Great info!
 
Just a general reminder: if doing correction will be a big part of the shop`s use, be sure to have some way to *only* illuminate the surface being corrected while leaving the rest of the shop dark.

"Dark Field Inspection using Point-Source Illumination" is what you want for what we generally call swirl-spotting. A brightly lit shop is simply awful for that by comparison.

I have dozens of fluorescent tubes (including on the walls), but I turn all those off when doing correction/inspection.

I`m leery of updating to LEDs as almost all of the ones I`ve tried in the house eventually started flickering to some extent, and that`d drive me *nuts* in the shop.
 
Do most go with 5000k color temp? Inside the house I tend to stick with warmer bulbs (not a fan of the sterile feel with super white light inside), but if the higher K is beneficial in the shop than I could see going that route.

Trying to decide between 4K and 5K.
 
Oneheadlite said:
Do most go with 5000k color temp? Inside the house I tend to stick with warmer bulbs (not a fan of the sterile feel with super white light inside), but if the higher K is beneficial in the shop than I could see going that route.

Trying to decide between 4K and 5K.
Click to expand...

Hey, this is all personal preference, always had "cool white" 4100K at work, we changed to 5000K LED`s and everyone liked it better. At home I was doing the "soft white" 2700K CFL`s, an electrician recommended 3500K "bright white" so I went to that and liked that better, have since been moving to 5000K. I think the interim change to 3500K damped the shock of going from 2700K to 5000K. I think we`re just used to the "warm" look because that`s what a tungsten filament gives you, once you get used to the cooler colors they don`t seem sterile. At least that`s been my experience, but as I said, personal preference, age (eyesight changes), etc. all play into this.

For the garage I wouldn`t hesitate on the 5000K.
 
My entire house was changed over to 5k and some 5500k lights many years ago.

Now I can`t go anywhere with warmer lights without seeing the yellow and brown cast they emit. It`s so much harder to see with those warm bulbs. Much more eye strain.

In the garage 5k at least. If you are working on a car and light temp matters that much you`ll turn off the overheads and use scangrips (or similar) with more accurate light output.

Only downside of cooler light is typically less accurate color output. But in the end all LEDs are pretty poor at that. There is ok output bulbs and there is garbage lighting. I`ve yet to find high CRI, high R9 LEDs that are bright enough and cost effective enough to install in a garage.
 
dwaleke said:
My entire house was changed over to 5k and some 5500k lights many years ago.

Now I can`t go anywhere with warmer lights without seeing the yellow and brown cast they emit. It`s so much harder to see with those warm bulbs. Much more eye strain.
Click to expand...

As I was suggesting earlier, if you are used to soft white, then daylight bulbs seem very "sterile", but once you get used to daylight bulbs, soft white is very yellow and hard to see in. My point is...I agree, LOL.

dwaleke said:
Only downside of cooler light is typically less accurate color output. But in the end all LEDs are pretty poor at that.
Click to expand...

Is that correct? I thought the LED`s were low 80`s CRI which is much better than the old "cool white" fluorescents which were terrible, IIRC.
 
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