Olie Posted January 5 Share Posted January 5 Over the past 2 years I have been slowly building out a woodshop in mostly two stalls of a 42x30 three car garage. One thing that needed some major improvements is lighting. Proper lighting is important in a woodshop so I thought I’d share a quick, easy, and fairly inexpensive project I did to add a lot of lighting. When my house was built in 2019 I didn’t imagine I’d develop a passion for this hobby and never really thought about lighting for my garage with all the stuff and decisions when building a house. Of course the electrician just did minimum code and put in 6 screw in bulb fixtures. At the time it seemed adequate for parking and storage. Here is a picture of my garage right after my house was completed to show the lighting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olie Posted January 5 Author Share Posted January 5 The first thing I did after being in the house a bit was replace the bulbs with a higher powered screw in fixture like these. It added a lot more lighting and was good for general garage use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olie Posted January 5 Author Share Posted January 5 Fast forward to now and woodshop purposes I wanted to add more light. What I wanted to accomplish was proper light output in lumens, proper light color, spaced evenly through shop, relatively inexpensive, no running wires in attic or difficult electrical work. I did some research on # of lumens and also proper color which they call kelvins. There are a lot of lumen calculations and articles that differ greatly. One article says 75 lumens per sq ft at a minimum and others said double that. As for color I read that a range of 3000k to 6000k was best. Lighting below 3000k is too warm and yellow and above 6000k is too harsh or blue. Many people settle on 5000k but I wanted to see for myself. I first decided to replace the screw in fixture with a “helicopter style” light that I found. It provided 4,000 lumens and actually had a button that offered 3 different kelvin settings for color. 3000k, 4000k, and 5000k. I figured these would be a good test for color. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olie Posted January 5 Author Share Posted January 5 After playing with the different colors, I determined that 5000k was slightly too harsh and sterile. I have white ceiling and white walls and it was a little too sterile. 3000k was too warm and yellow and 4000k felt perfect. I think that if I had yellower walls, plywood/wood walls, or darker walls, the 5000k probably would’ve been better, but due all white I liked 4000k. Now I needed to find some fixtures to match and fit my other criteria. I found these multi-directional shop lights at Costco for only $30 per fixture and they provided up to 8000 lumens and a color of 4000k. They can be operated by wiring a switch or by a pull chain and plugged into each other to link up to 6 lights per plug/switch. I like that they had different settings that illuminated light just straight down, down and sides, or just on sides. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olie Posted January 5 Author Share Posted January 5 I first bought 5 to see how many I really needed. They were super easy to install and I went with the flush mount option. I have 9ft ceilings and it worked well. I also have 4 ceiling outlets, 2 for garage door opener and 2 others. I used those to plug the first one in and then link the rest. I started with a row of 5 going the width of my shop area by the overhead doors. I then decided to do more rows of 5 and do on and planned out where I wanted then and how many. I picked up 11 more and got them all installed. And here us the result. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olie Posted January 5 Author Share Posted January 5 What I like: - inexpensive - Easy to install - good light output and color - different light settings - linkable What I don’t like: - I didn’t do a wall switch so they are operated with pull chain and I don’t want to have to individually turn on 16 lights each time but it could offer the ability to just turn on what’s needed and where needed in a one man shop. I decided to buy some smart wifi plugs that they plug into in the ceiling outlet and I can turn them on or off with an app on my phone. Still not the most ideal but better than more expensive and more electrical work. Total lumens: Costco lights = 16 x 8000 = 128,000 Feit lights = 4 x 4000 = 16,000 Total 144,000 Looking at those numbers I would’ve figured that was too many but it really isn’t and I can control the settings and individual lights when needed Total cost: 16 Costco led shop lights x $30 = $480 4 helicopter style Feit lights x $20 = $80 4 pack of smart wifi wall plugs = $32 1 six pack of beer = $8 Total = $600 Not too bad for 20 light fixtures and some WiFi plugs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olie Posted January 5 Author Share Posted January 5 This ended up calculating to 169 lumens per sq ft fir my approx 850 sq ft space. Here us a pic showing the difference between two light settings. I like the lower setting when I’m just hanging out listening to music and not doing woodworking which seems to happen more often than it should. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kev Posted January 5 Share Posted January 5 Nice! I assume you can get in the attic space? Wouldn't be too difficult to add a switch to the lights.. It looks brighter than mine but, pictures can be deceiving.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olie Posted January 5 Author Share Posted January 5 Yes I can and may do that in the future, but I dread getting up there with the blown in insulation and know nothing about electrical Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kev Posted January 5 Share Posted January 5 18 minutes ago, Olie said: Yes I can and may do that in the future, but I dread getting up there with the blown in insulation and know nothing about electrical Maybe just pull the Romex and then hire an electrician to tie it in for you.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olie Posted January 5 Author Share Posted January 5 1 hour ago, Kev said: Maybe just pull the Romex and then hire an electrician to tie it in for you.. The manual says 6 lights linked to a switch I think. I think that would mean at least 3 switches but I’m dumb when it comes to electrical. I don’t have any room in my panel for another circuit. I think I’ll try this for now. When the electrician comes back in the future to finish the wiring in my unfinished basement I’ll talk to him about it then to discuss a better option. This method I did do was to avoid the electrical stuff for now. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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