Best type and placement of lighting for a garage

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rtfd241

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What is the best light that would be appropriate for a 20 by 20 garage. It has 9 foot ceilings. Would florescent or halogens be the best, what brightness. Also were would be the best place to mount them, ceiling or wall or both?
 
rtfd241 said:
What is the best light that would be appropriate for a 20 by 20 garage. It has 9 foot ceilings. Would florescent or halogens be the best, what brightness. Also were would be the best place to mount them, ceiling or wall or both?
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I don't think there is really any good answer to this. Each light shows different things. Honestly, I just did Fluorescents in my garage because they were cheaper. If I need a halogen I have a portable one. They get HOT though and I hate working under them for very long. I'd just mount them in the ceiling. You can mount them in the walls but I've worked with wall mounted lights before and hated my own shadow getting in the way while I worked.
 
Go to lowes or home depot, pick up (4) 48inch T12 Fixtures for $9.74 each and a pack of 10 6500K bulbs for $19.95 and you should be very happy.



Here's my set up, with 4100K bulbs which are a bit dimmer than 6500K



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LoiG37 said:
Go to lowes or home depot, pick up (4) 48inch T12 Fixtures for $9.74 each and a pack of 10 6500K bulbs for $19.95 and you should be very happy.



Here's my set up, with 4100K bulbs which are a bit dimmer than 6500K



DSC02776.jpg
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I'd recommend more than 4 if you can. LoiG37 has a very bright garage and a white ceiling so the light reflects. I have 12 lights in my garage and it's about 24'x24'. My old house I had a 16'x20' garage and had white walls and still used 6-8 light fixtures.
 
While fluorescents are good for general illumination (unlike Danase I like both wall and ceiling mounted, with separate circuits), I find them lousy for swirl-spotting. Good for some other texture/gloss isues though.



Incandescents are cheap and good for spotting swirls.



There are more expensive options if you want to get serious, but I'm pretty happy with a mixture of fluorescents and incandescents. I turn out the fluorescents when doing most inspections, and I turn out *all* these lights when using specialty lighting for serious inspections.



Whatever you decide to go with, get more than you think you need.
 
Stylinhonda said:
How did you place the 12 lights around your 24x24 garage? I'm scared when I do mine I will have too much light.
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How can you have too much light? Here are some pics that shows a few of the lights. The 12 are just over the car where I work too. I still need to get lights over on the other side of the garage as well.





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Danase- Hey, whose Grand Marquis?





Stylinhonda said:
How did you place the 12 lights around your 24x24 garage? I'm scared when I do mine I will have too much light.
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While my garage is bigger than that (and has a cathedral ceiling), I have *dozens* of 8' tubes and it's never too bright.



Having banks of lights on different circuits is handy in all sorts of ways, and you can easily tailor the light to whatever the job calls for.
 
Looks, good....I guess there is never too much light. I've got 7 so far purchased for my 22x23 garage....maybe I will get a few more. What about ceiling placement? Going side to side or front to rear of garage, or both?
 
Stylinhonda said:
What about ceiling placement? Going side to side or front to rear of garage, or both?
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Depends on how the shop is configured and how you think you'll be using the individual circuits (assuming you wire it that way).



Go for an arrangement that will give the most uniform/consistent lighting in the areas where you'll be working. A good electrical contractor can figure it out based on the "throw" of the lights.
 
Accumulator said:
Danase- Hey, whose Grand Marquis?









While my garage is bigger than that (and has a cathedral ceiling), I have *dozens* of 8' tubes and it's never too bright.



Having banks of lights on different circuits is handy in all sorts of ways, and you can easily tailor the light to whatever the job calls for.
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Hey Accumulator! The Grand Marquis is mine.



I agree. The other half of the garage is going to be on another switch, when I get around to finishing it. I was originally going to do like you. One set of fluorescent and one set of incandescent lights. I just got these done so I could get some light in there because the garage had nothing when we moved in.
 
Jakerooni said:
Bob you can really brighten that up by putting up some drywall and giving a good coat of white. That would make a night and day difference there.
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Yeah, that is how my old garage was. A little bit at a time though. LOL Once the electrical is all done, in Spring when I can dig a trench to run some 220 to it, I'm going to start insulating the walls and ceiling. For the ceiling I'm hoping to use the spray in expanding foam stuff. The walls I'll just use fiberglass and then throw up some paneling. I'm not a huge fan of drywall in the garage because drywall is not good with moisture and if I need to get behind it I can't just pop a panel out.
 
Accumulator said:
Heh heh, now *that's* a pleasant surprise :D
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It's a surprise to everyone I think! LOL The Subaru goes back to the dealer this weekend and I'm finally done with dealing with that car. We picked the Merc up about a month or 2 ago. Found it really cheap. It's a 1997 with 70,000 miles. Has never seen snow and from looking at the underside I'm pretty sure it's never seen rain either. One of the most clean undercarriage I've ever seen on a car this age. We got lucky. in about a month it will start seeing snow though. :(
 
Anyone ever tried mixing bulbs? I've got 10 lights, say in 5 of them put 6500k and in the other 5 put 5000k. Placing maybe one side of the garage with 6500k and the other the 5000k, or the front 6500k and rear 6500k.....Or would mixing everyother one 5000k/6500k 5000k/6500k be beneficial?



Just a thought!
 
I've been working on getting my lighting done. While the placement is critical, make sure you place them so the lighting overlaps on the ground, place them closer than you think to each other. Get as much lighting as you can afford, buy more later. I like 5100K as its not too blue. More important than color temp (k) is the CRI index (color rendering index) this is how intense the color is, 100 is the best halogens are 100 in many cases. I have 92 CRI and 5100K bulbs, they cost more but the color is true and bright. The bulbs you get at Home Depot are like 72 CRI, and there is a huge diff between 92 and 72.



These are my opinions for what its worth.



Cheers,

GREG
 
Stylinhonda said:
Anyone ever tried mixing bulbs? I've got 10 lights, say in 5 of them put 6500k and in the other 5 put 5000k. Placing maybe one side of the garage with 6500k and the other the 5000k, or the front 6500k and rear 6500k.....Or would mixing everyother one 5000k/6500k 5000k/6500k be beneficial?



Just a thought!
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I thought of that but I think you'd be better off having different bulbs on different switches. I think it's be goofy on the eyes with a bunch of different type lights.
 
And don't forget to get fixtures made for cold weather if your garage is not heated. And I recommend them even if you have a space heater because it still takes a while for the heat to get to the fixtures to heat up.
 
Danase said:
And don't forget to get fixtures made for cold weather if your garage is not heated. And I recommend them even if you have a space heater because it still takes a while for the heat to get to the fixtures to heat up.
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Good call, walked out to the garage yesterday and wondered why I didn't have any lights working. You get what you pay for I guess.:think:
 
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