Need suggestions for garage lighting

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BTLew81

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All,
I have a two car garage in the new house that is pretty poorly lit. So, I am looking to install two shop type lights, preferably LED. I am open to fluorescent as well, and would like your thoughts and experiences. I want to stay pretty reasonable in terms of price.

Thanks,
Brett
 
At my last house I installed three 8' fluorescent fixtures (six 8' tubes in total) and installed high-output 110-watt tubes in them. This was in a 2-car garage with walls painted white. It was a bit too much light actually. Two of the fixtures probably would have been adequate. If I recall correctly the fixtures were about $65 each.

One bit of advice, if you install fluorescent fixtures in an unheated garage make sure the ballasts will work in cold weather. The ones I had were good down to sub-zero temps, but I understand some will not work when it gets down to about 50 deg F.
 
Originally Posted By: Donald
I have 4 bright white 120 equiv. watt CFL bulbs in double car garage. Does a great job.


CFL's are terrible if want instant light in the cold. I am thankful CFL is on its way out, terrible tech.....
 
Originally Posted By: madRiver
Originally Posted By: Donald
I have 4 bright white 120 equiv. watt CFL bulbs in double car garage. Does a great job.


CFL's are terrible if want instant light in the cold. I am thankful CFL is on its way out, terrible tech.....

In my current garage I installed a couple of these huge 85-watt CFLs that are designed for photo studio lighting. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0019HZ...ailpage_o00_s00 They actually light up instantly when I flick the switch, but I know what you mean about most CFLs.
 
Soon after I moved into my house, Dad and I wired up the garage with extra outlets and a fluorescent light in each quadrant of the garage. Purchased cold-weather fixtures from Menard's and they've worked fine ever since. And it' a huge improvement over the lone 60W bulb the builder installed.
grin.gif
 
I would suggest also painting the ceiling a bright white in order to reflect as much light back down as possible. Takes a half day to do and not that much cost.
 
My garage has a center and a ceiling mounted outlet on both sides of the garage.
There are outlet to socket light plugs in which there is a 300 watt equiv in the center and a 150 watt equiv on both sides. While it all seems ghetto and dangerous, I applied some 3M adhesive putty to keep the socket light plugs from falling onto cars.
It works. I could always screw a few eyelet hooks and upgrade to something else, but what I have is bright enough, CFL bulbs are cheap. CFL bulbs are even more dim at first when it's really cold but they still warm up in a few minutes.

2juds.jpg
 
Current setup is one lone bulb. I plan to convert that to an outlet and plug the fixtures into it. Maybe some cold weather flor. bulbs are the way to go.
 
Great question. Here's my input.

I have a pretty standard 22x22 two-car garage. In addition to the small lights on the garage door openers, the previous owner of the house installed two twin tube fluorescent lamps on the ceiling. They work great to light up the garage. The ceiling is white and the walls are all dry-walled and painted white as well.

That said, the lamps are more or less in the center of the garage. So, when you have a vehicle pulled in, the open hood actually blocks much of the direct light from the lamps.

If I were to do it myself, I'd install either two lamps pretty close to one end of the garage (to illuminate whichever end you normally park the engine of the car), or install four lamps, two at each, for symmetry.
 
Draw an "E" out of flourescent fixtures so you have the "fingers" of the E on the edges and middle so they shine between or around your cars. The "spine" of the E can be at the front of the garage over your workbenches, or at the door end if you back the car in to start work in the afternoon and it segues into evening. Don't let the open doors block the light, or rig them so they shine down through the door windows.
wink.gif


Use at least two switches so you can control "full on" vs "I ran out here for my lunchbox".

lights_zpsmik984tq.png


A rookie mistake is to put lights over the roofs of their cars. Then when you work on tire/ brakes you're in the shadows.

Home depot has $10 4 foot T8 LED flourescents that run on regular ballasts.
 
When we built I used 12 recessed lighting fixtures in the attached garage-8 cover the sides of the 3 vehicle bays and 4 across the front that light the storage shelving. I like the recessed lighting because it's flush with the ceiling-if I'm over at the table saw with a long board and happen to swing it up and around there is no chance that I'll accidently take out a bare bulb hanging down, especially since the garage ceilings are just 10' high. The reflectors do a great job of casting the light down where I need it.

In the shop I have a combination of high bay lighting, fluorescent work area lighting, and halogen bench lighting; other than the halogen lighting I wouldn't use either the high bay (overkill) or fluorescent lights (never seem to be as bright as I'd like) in a regular garage.
 
I like the idea of recessed if you can drill the holes right and wire it in a straightforward manner (perhaps need a right angle drill to go through the joists to run the wires).

But Id probably start at Costco and try one or two of the LED shop lights and go from there.

Mobile task lighting on some cords may be helpful too, if you end up with shadow issues...
 
Best bang for the buck, IMO, is still a 4' flourescent, electronic ballast, twin T8 tubes. LED will probably pass it in a few years, but the cost right now is just too high, unless you basically build your own fixtures from parts (a project I plan to do for my new warehouse/garage, which will have no electrical service but will have a small solar panel, deep-cycle storage battery and hpme-brew 12V LED lighting). T8/electronic ballast still has a slight warm-up time, but it starts at higher luminance than the old magnetic ballast and T12s, and 10x the initial brightness of a lot of CFL cr*p bulbs on the market. Its pretty good in lumens/watt, too, though both T5 and LED win that. T5 is great, but its too late on the scene- LED is going to drop in price faster than T5 will be able to match and it'll still have the life and warm-up problems of all fluorescent variants.


CFL is absolutely a dead technology. I wouldn't waste another penny on a technology that is literally the worst option currently available. If you've already got a lot of fixtures with conventional Edison-base sockets you want to upgrade, look at the Cree LED lineup. You can get the plastic-case "4-flow" model for around $5 at Home Depot. the better glass-shell Cree is still around $9 for a 60-watt equivalent. Far, far better performance (no warm-up, much longer life, more lumens/watt) than CFL.
 
Originally Posted By: eljefino


A rookie mistake is to put lights over the roofs of their cars. Then when you work on tire/ brakes you're in the shadows.

Home depot has $10 4 foot T8 LED flourescents that run on regular ballasts.


Nailed it!
smile.gif
Except T8 is always electronic ballast as far as I know.

Place the fixtures between the cars and in front of the cars... far enough in front so that the hood doesn't block them.
 
Originally Posted By: Donald
CFLs outperform LEDs for high equiv. wattage bulbs.

At HomeDepot I do not see any 120W equiv light output LEDs. They will come, but are not there yet.


Menards has a few different 120W equivalent LEDs, but they run $25-35 each. They also have some 250W equivalent LEDs. Those are $50 each.
 
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