Garage Lighting - Looking for recommendations

oneheadlite

oneheadlite

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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!
 
Sounds similar to my garage. Curious what people answer. Made sure I had a lot of led lights and good outlets when I built my shop.
 
If you have access to the space above the garage then it would be easy to add more light fixtures. I was in the same boat. Two standard porcelain screw type bulb holders. I first installed 4ft LED shop lights by switching the fixtures to ones that have an outlet as well as the screw fitting. I retained the bulbs and had the 4ft LEDs all on a switch. This worked good but didn't cover the garage door side very well.

Being bored during the covid winter I ran wire and put two more screw type fixtures on the other side of the garage. In these I put in the screw in "pedal" type LEDs which have more lumens than the 4ft lights. This covers everything pretty well.
 
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.
 
I would go with 5K and I would suggest going with more fixtures with lower lumen output vs less fixtures with higher output since your garage is probably a fairly low ceiling. The high output high bay lights are way too bright for low ceilings and don’t provide the correct lighting pattern when mounted at lower heights. Another option would be to get fixtures with some type of diffuser to help reduce the sharpness and spread the light.

I also highly recommend making sure you get dimmable lights and using a dimmer. It requires a few extra wires, but it’s well worth it. You can have it bright bright when you need it and then dim them down when you don’t need operating room bright. :laughing:
 
I am resurrecting this thread rather than starting from scratch because there is already good input

Here is a picture of a typical finished garage by the builder we are using

They tape and mud and finish paint all their garages in bright white

They aren’t stingy with the screw in fixtures either and the model homes I looked at had 4-6 per bay

422e2f55c54edfdf18db0b9de3823666.jpg


After framing we will do a walkthrough with the electrician and make any changes or additions to lighting, outlets, switches, etc

The only limits are how much we want to spend

I want a well lit garage overall but I especially want my detailing bay to have adequate lighting

I can have LED strips put in or I can stick with the screw in fixtures and go with these if I want

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Has anyone tried these?

There are many options available as far as the number of panels, color temp, etc

I like that you can adjust the aim

I want to do it right the first time so any and all input is welcomed

Thanks


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I haven’t used those but I think those would in general work well but would leave you with shadows on the sides. What I did in a finishing booth was put a 45 triangle of drywall between the wall and ceiling and put 4’ led (sealed) lights on all sides and it provides immense amounts of light without any shadows. I’ll see if I can get a picture of what I’m referring to.
 
dgage said:
I haven’t used those but I think those would in general work well but would leave you with shadows on the sides. What I did in a finishing booth was put a 45 triangle of drywall between the wall and ceiling and put 4’ led (sealed) lights on all sides and it provides immense amounts of light without any shadows. I’ll see if I can get a picture of what I’m referring to.
Click to expand...

Excellent

Thanks


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dgage said:
Here is an example of what I mean by lights on a 45 between wall and ceiling though I surface mounted my lights.

EED756DA-748C-4DC1-AE97-2D9CCC5333C0.jpeg


And these are similar to the vapor tight sealed led lights that were purchased.

Home Depot Vapor Tight LED 4 ft Fixture
Click to expand...

That's pretty much what I thought you were getting at

I will think about it but without building an extra interior wall in the garage I would only be able to do that on one wall and I need to see how those added angles would work with the height of the existing garage ceiling and the positioning of the rails for the garage door

That would mean moving the car in and out as I progressed but that is certainly not a deal breaker

I like the fixtures you linked and am thinking strips are the way to go, I just need to figure out how many so I am ready when we do our walk through with the electrician

They will send us a set of our plans with all the normal electrical stuff added and then we add in what we think we want and then the walkthrough happens and reality sets in

I am posting this and then I will add a screenshot of the floorplan for the garage, it's the right hand bay that I envision using for detailing

I will have a workbench and my detailing supplies stored across the back wall of that bay

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I don’t think you’d need to worry about lights on the open side since you’d have lights overhead further away, which would light up the side of your car but that also depends on if you park a car right next to your detail bay. I’d at least put some lights over the “aisle” there.
 
LOL, my hillbilly buddy put the lights about 7ft up on the wall as a real quick "temp fix" just to get some lighting in his pole building.
Later he was impressed with how well they worked, so they stayed and we added a few ceiling lights to even things out and get rid of shadows.
Of course, I had seen this numerous times in paint booths and wash/detail bays, but I really got a kick out of him and his amazement. "Man, I can't believe how well these work on the walls!" LOL
 
I have added these to a few garages now and love them. They are from Amazon
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