Garage lighting

[NYEngineer]

When I bought my house, the area I designated as a workshop in the basement was lit with a single 60 watt bulb. Completely useless.
I used two LED fixtures from HF. Absolutely perfect. Now that my youngest is in his senior year of college, I'm finally building the 24x36 garage I've wanted for years. I plan on using the same lights.

 

[Donald]

I have three 8' x 2 bulb fluorescent lights. Bought LED bulbs where I could gut the fixture of ballast and rewire the inside of the fixture for the LED bulbs.

I figured with new fixtures I might need to move wiring in the ceiling and did not want to get into that.

 

[barbersurgeon]

When I bought my house, the area I designated as a workshop in the basement was lit with a single 60 watt bulb. Completely useless.
I used two LED fixtures from HF. Absolutely perfect. Now that my youngest is in his senior year of college, I'm finally building the 24x36 garage I've wanted for years. I plan on using the same lights.

Go 28’ deep. It’s a huge difference in the move around/bench area.

 

[barbersurgeon]

Thinking of adding some LED strip lights near ceiling height on a couple of walls to help fill in light at different angles.

 

[JHZR2]

Post in thread 'Who knows garage lighting'

Sep 4, 2025

I like 3000-5000K for task lighting. For large expansive spaces, I’ve had good luck with the 5000K 8’ 15k lumen tube-style lights.

I might even ditch the cans, use a lightbulb to outlet adapter, and then just link the bulbs.

https://a.co/d/aanEi1Q

Just four of these across the ridge of my 1000 sf loft puts out more than enough light. And they link together. Adding more would make it super bright.

• JHZR2

• 

 

[Speedbird001]

Do you have access above the ceiling?

My 2-car came with the standard 2 single [bare] bulbs... I languished for hours looking at awesome solutions, but a year later had done nothing. I do have access above. So to just get something done, I measured out a 3x3 square and surface mounted 9 shallow 11-b boxes. Climbed up into the attic and ran 14-2 between the 9 boxes (Eliminating) the 2 original hanging bulbs lights. Wired up and mounted the standard 4k "puck" lights from Amazon.

Is it perfect / 100% ideal for everything? No. but for ~$250 it is excellent and 10x better than the builder [minimum code] and looks pretty slick. (Price of wire is a shocker! ~$1/ft That was ~1/2 the total project cost) FWIW, my last house I connected a bunch of Horror Freight LED shop lights... Got the job done, but was a bit jankey... This way better for a minimum amount more.

 

[NYEngineer]

Go 28’ deep. It’s a huge difference in the move around/bench area.

I'm going 24 wide and 36 deep. It was originally going to be 24x30 until I realized how much space all of my tools are going to take up.