Best/cleanest lighting for garage

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Glorysends

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I'm new here and I'm sure I'll get "search" "it's been covered", but I've been doing tons of searching and still having mix reviews. I am in the process of building my own house and I detail my cars regularly and like to have a clean showroom look in my garage.

I was wanting to do recessed can lights inside my garage, but heard they aren't great for showing off paint and shine or good for detailing. I love the clean sleak look of recessed lighting and don't really want to do a bunch of fluorescent lights even though I've heard they are better. So my question is do they make recessed fluorescent lighting or what type of recessed can lights or bulbs can I use for detailing and showing off the cars? Thanks in advance. Also, little more about my garage is I live in Chicago suburbs and the size of it is 39'x31'
 
hammargren said:
I was in the same boat as you and didn't want to have flourecent lighting all over in my garage even though I know it was probably the best so I went with these and I'm very pleased.

Feit 38 Watt LED Non-Dimmable Light Bulb

http://www.menards.com/main/items/media/FEITE001/ProductMedium/c4000_5k_led_bulb_NEW.jpg
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Great thanks! So you went with recessed cans? have any pictures of your garage with these lights on? Thanks! I don't have to buy any special type of cans for those lights do I?
 
recessed fluorescent fixtures are very common in office and institutional settings. If you work in an office, just look up.

most will have baffles and other reflectors in them, so the style is typically a little different than your traditional can.

Those fixtures are often associate with a drop ceiling system, not sure how well they play with drywall for access to things like the ballast. You may have to be particular about the fixture you choose.
 
I guess I should of clarified. I know they make recessed fluorescent like in office buildings, but didn't know if they made nicer looking ones or different styles that aren't so big and ugly looking. I just want to do it right the first time and the cleanest brightest way possible.
 
Well, I'm presuming the builder and his electrician, or if you are GC'ing your electrician, is installing the lighting, prolly worth a discussion about your options. Or a lighting guy, whoever is going to provide the fixtures--usually the electrician (or you) will be buying the fixtures from a place that has an outside salesman you can talk to about your application.
 
Glorysends said:
I'm new here and I'm sure I'll get "search" "it's been covered", but I've been doing tons of searching and still having mix reviews. I am in the process of building my own house and I detail my cars regularly and like to have a clean showroom look in my garage.

I was wanting to do recessed can lights inside my garage, but heard they aren't great for showing off paint and shine or good for detailing. I love the clean sleak look of recessed lighting and don't really want to do a bunch of fluorescent lights even though I've heard they are better. So my question is do they make recessed fluorescent lighting or what type of recessed can lights or bulbs can I use for detailing and showing off the cars? Thanks in advance. Also, little more about my garage is I live in Chicago suburbs and the size of it is 39'x31'
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I think you need to decide which is more important, form or function. I'm no lighting expert, but I don't believe recessed can lighting will distribute the light as evenly as a well laid out florescent or LED tube set up. There is a reason you see this type of lighting in so many industrial applications. ;)

This is a thread I've been following for about a year now and it's full of excellent info. I'm putting 26 of the LED fixtures listed in the first post into my new shop for 100+ ft candle. :props:

The Best Light Fixture Ever! - The Garage Journal Board

Some examples of professional garage lighting layouts
Light Fixture Layout Collections - The Garage Journal Board



My layout
 
Setec Astronomy said:
So that will be 52 4' bulbs, Rasky?
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Yes :)

Not sure I did this correctly but using just the 20 vertical fixtures I was at 93 ft candles. I couldn't figure out a way to add the horizontal fixtures but it should put me over 100ft candle, or close to it.

 
RaskyR1 said:
Not sure I did this correctly but using just the 20 vertical fixtures I was at 93 ft candles. I couldn't figure out a way to add the horizontal fixtures but it should put me over 100ft candle, or close to it.
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Wow, thanks for showing that online tool. And of course thanks for bringing footcandles into the discussion, so we have a standardized way to talk about it!
 
Look at the Cree ZR series light. You can recess it or surface mount with a surface adapter frame. Don't compare listed lumens for fluorescent and LED. LED will provide better lighting with less lumens and lower wattage. The Cree ZR 2x4 will provide equivalent light to a 3 lamps fluorescent fixture. The Cree fixture is also 0-10V dimming ready. Just wire in a compatible dimming and you can set the lighting levels you need.
 
We have been testing some new LED tube lights, they are 6k lumen. We have some more testing to do, but once we get into our new shop and get it all wired in we will more than likely start to sell them as well
 
DwightS said:
Look at the Cree ZR series light. You can recess it or surface mount with a surface adapter frame. Don't compare listed lumens for fluorescent and LED. LED will provide better lighting with less lumens and lower wattage. The Cree ZR 2x4 will provide equivalent light to a 3 lamps fluorescent fixture. The Cree fixture is also 0-10V dimming ready. Just wire in a compatible dimming and you can set the lighting levels you need.
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That's an interesting fixture, but how can you say "Don't compare listed lumens for fluorescent and LED"? A lumen is a standard measure of light output...I mean, that's what it's for, is to compare different lighting sources.

That Cree 2x4 troffer has an initial lumens of 5000 (if you buy the brightest one), compared to a mean lumens of ~2700 per 4' T8 bulb, so a T8 fixture with 3 or 4 bulbs is going to put out a lot more light.

I also don't see a life on those Cree fixtures, although they do project lumen maintenance out to 100,000 hours, which is better than most LED fixtures which are rated for 50,000 hours. The problem with a 50,000 hour life (not for a home garage) is that a T8 bulb is rated for 30,000 hours, then you put a new bulb in, when the life is up on your LED fixture, you have to replace the fixture, which is going to be a lot more expensive than a bulb, and for most people will require an electrician visit.

And of course that life is an average and I've seen early failures on LED fixtures. It can be argued that the lifecycle cost of an LED fixture is less than a T8 due to energy savings, but the nuisance factor remains to be seen. I'm not sure LED technology is fully mature for these applications, I mean maybe if you install more fixtures to make up for the lumen deficit, but certainly in a retrofit application--I mean if you went from a 4 T12 at about 7500 mean lumens to 3 T8's at about 7500 mean lumens...now you're talking about this Cree fixture with 5000 initial lumens.
 
RaskyR1 said:
While those lights are very bright and definitely bad a$$ looking, they are one of the worst LED options in terms of value when you consider the lumen per dollar over the life of the bulbs. Spend a few minutes and look at the spreadsheet posted in my previous post.
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Can't wait to see your setup Rasky! That LED setup really looks affordable for performance.
 
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