im curious to know what type of lighting fellow flashaholics have/use in their garage?
im not talking about flashlights, just lights to light up your garage.
the only light i have in the entire garage is a 24 watt cfl that turns on near the door. waaay too dim to light up the entire garage. i want to install some more lighting. any recommendations or suggestions please.
it can be simple or modern.
but i prefer something that doesnt require any or too much electrical wiring where i have to run cable or wires through ceilings and such since im not too much of a handy man
Two 4' foot CFL fluorescent lights in the ceiling and Two 2' CLF fluorescent lights above the bench. The 4 footers I hung and wired, but the 2 footers are plugged in to 110v outlets and hung over the bench.
Just old school fluorescents and a hundred watt bulb on a very long extension cord. You know the one, it’s in a little cage and has a hook on it. As they say, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
I use a few of the multi 5mm led lamps under vehicles for flood, I have a nw c8 or my nw d5 build in a headstrap and a 26650 nw light to rest somewhere when at work.
I’m soon rebuilding all my work lights to use hi cri xm-l2’s and qlite drivers, I work under vehicles alot at work, its the main reason for my interest in lights, I’ve come to realise that the lack of glare caused by a moderately driven nw emitter is a godsend, one in a headstrap is very useful for both quick inspections and longer jobs. One floody light that can be shoved in a crevice to give some flood or tail stood is usefull.
The mulit led lights have magnets and hooks, again handy for mounting to give some flood.
Next project is some flat square hi cri mule lights to replace the multi emitter flooders.
In my own garage, I intend to pick up some bench lights and use mt-g2’s to give spot lighting, tubes for overall lighting.
I just recently upgraded all the electrical system in my “garage”. Truth be told it is a large three sided (+roof) shed that we park the cars in during the winter (we get several feet of snow and it regularly gets below negative 20F).
100W 4200K 65CRI 14,400lm Pulse Start Multi-Vapor Metal Halide lamp on an electronic ballast with hot restrike capability. Guaranteed to ignite at 40 below.
On the exterior of the garage I have my area/security lamp that illuminates the roadway and entranceway to our property; a 55W LPS SOX Low Pressure Sodium Lamp putting out over 22,000lm.
We had been using CFLs but they would fail to start in the cold weather and generally not last long. Incandescents would ice up during the off phase and then melt the ice and short out during the on phase (it was not an exterior rated fixture).
If your CFL means fluorescent tube light, then i suggest that you could replace it with LED tube light which is energy-saving and looks more comfortable.
And it is very esay to install, the supplier will tell you how to replace it, vey easy.
A sound sensor LED tube light would be a much better choice. It will turn on when the voice up to xxdb, and will automatically turn off after several minites which is very convenient.
As for the watts and length and how many pieces you need depends on how large your garage is. I had good experience with it.
Hope this helps.
I forgot about the four 8 watt/3200K/400 lumen/PAR20 LED bulbs in the garage door openers. Door openers are hell on incandescent bulbs due to vibration. Even “rough service” bulbs died rather quickly. They also melted the plastic sockets on the door openers.
Running hidden electrical lines is a lot easier for ceilings than it is for walls, especially exterior walls. You could always do what I did; run the cables where you can see them and then spray paint them to match the ceiling/wall color.
but didnt the guy run the cables through the ceilings and down the walls to the outlet?
yea, that was what i was planning on doing. i was just gonna wire the cables down to the outlet, then painting the cables to match my wall color.
hey how do you guys mount your cables neatly against the wall to the outlet?
i know for my home stereo, they have these neat little cable mounts that goes into the wall, but those would be too small for the cables for the fixture.
There are cable clips available for such tasks. Hell if I know what they are officially called though, haha. I’ve seem ones that range from fitting 1/8” audio cable up to 1” industrial cable. Most have a hole for a nail/screw but some have an integral nail.
Covers are personal preference; looks count. The covers can offer some additional protection to the tubes. A wiring option is to use cable covers like they offer for TV cabling under a flat panel, and paint them as suggested above.
Just for info there are basically 4 styles of fl tube lights -
- With covers (some light lost)
- With upper reflectors (direct and reflected light)
- Bare (basic fixture)
- Indirect (where light is from bouncing off ceiling or another surface - just not as much useful light)
I like the clean look, but dislike taking them down to clean them so I went reflectors to get the most light in the garage (and air compressor handy for cleaning).
We have a LOT of tubes in our home - the previous owners put in indirect overhead lighting everywhere but the kitchen and bath to save with old style fl tubes. The kitchen has covered tubes for general and task lighting, as well.
Best lighting change was replacing everything with daylight tubes. Next best lighting change we’ve made is electronically controlled track lighting over the sinks in the master bath. Currently using the oem halogens and hoping to find a reasonably-priced, dimmable LED that will approximate them in brightness and warm tint.
