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A workshop, whether it be a single or two car garage attached to your house or one that is separate, or a shed, a metal building in your backyard, or anything that has some kind of shelter to protect your tools and supplies, could always use some kind of upgrade.
Upgrades could be simple or complex.
Some are cheap and others expensive.
My workshop is our two car garage that is attached to our house.
It is used for a variety of things, including, wood working and occasional welding.
It used to be where I did blacksmithing until we built a smithy out back away from the house and where the kids can’t run between me and the forge…something very hazardous.
Our garage is also where our outdoor cat lives in the evenings…her name is Sprocket.
Here she is chilling on our outdoor worm bins:
These worm bins are the raised drum planters, which we converted a couple to worm bins. You can read more about the raised planters here: RAISED PLASTIC DRUM PLANTER
Both our kids also have their workbenches in the garage/workshop.
A workshop needs to be a safe and comfortable working environment and one thing you could do to improve the safety and comfort in your space, whether it is a workshop, shed, or garage with mobile tools and work surfaces, is to provide good lighting.
Good lighting also helps you with viewing the actual colors of paints and stains rather than some other transformation of it due to the lighting you chose.
One of the best things I have done to my workshop was when I removed the florescent lighting and replaced them with LED.
It was a world of difference!
If you haven’t made the switch to LED yet, I highly recommend you do so as soon as you can.
What I originally started with were two 8 foot dual florescent fixtures that hung from the underside of the roof trusses.
I also had one single 4 foot florescent fixture directly above my workbench.
Sure, the 8 footers provided light in the main area, but it just wasn’t enough even after buying newer bulbs for them.
I had to make a choice…either buy another dual 8 footer or go LED.
In todays’ world, LED is the way to go.
Most lamps these days are LED.
They are efficient, bright, and cheaper to operate.
You can even buy flood lights that are LED.
I obviously went with LED.
The biggest decision between the two for me was cost.
It would have been cheaper to buy a new dual 8 foot florescent fixture than it would be to replace everything with LED.
But would the added florescent fixture be enough for what was needed?
It’s possible, but not likely.
But LED is the “in” thing and people who have switched to LED swear they are the best ever when it comes to new shop lighting.
I took the plunge and bought six four foot LED fixtures.
One went over my workbench and four went where the old 8 foot florescent fixtures were at.
The sixth one went in the far back corner of the garage where you exit from the laundry room (our garage is not square or rectangle. It has this kind of stupid wasted corner where the water heater is and where we put our box freezer. It is just a bit awkward and has a tripping hazard because they just couldn’t resist not putting a one inch vertical transition in the concrete slab.).
Things I looked for in LED lighting
Everyone has different needs and desires when it comes to lighting.
Here is what I looked for after determining what I wanted after doing research on LED lighting for workshops.
Linkable
I needed something that was linkable, also referred to as daisy-chain.
Our garage has one electrical outlet at the ceiling that is controlled by a light switch.
Additional hard wiring was not desirable.
Most of the 4 foot LED fixtures I found at the time would allow you to connect up to four or five fixtures in a row.
This was good for me because I could plug each of these fixtures into each other and they would all be controlled with a single wall switch.
Pull chain
A pull chain was needed for the other two fixtures…the one that is in the stupid corner and the other above the workbench.
This would allow them to be plugged in at all times and turned on and off with just a pull of a chain.
Direct installation or suspended installation
Two of the fixtures I have are direct mounted installation, meaning they are not suspended with cables.
This allowed the one above the workbench to be mounted directly to the underside of the shelf I have above my workbench without hanging too low.
They other is in the stupid corner, which was mounted directly since the mounting hooks would have been too far from the roof trusses to mount to and so the light fixture doesn’t swing back and forth when pulling the chain.
The other four were mounted with the supplied cables for the suspended installation.
I could have installed the four with the direct installation, but because LED was new to me, I chose to go with the suspended installation so it is easier to move them around if I needed to make adjustments to where lighting needed to be.
To this day, almost four years later, they are still suspended with the cables and have not been relocated.
Double Tube
Going with double tube seemed to make sense to me for the extra amount of light output compared to a single tube. A single tube may be appropriate over a workbench.
Color Temperature
Color temperature seems to be one of those debated topics when it comes to the visual look of lighting.
There were a few selections to choose from…daylight and crystal white.
I went with a color temperature of crystal white 5000K rather than 4000K, mostly because that is what most people recommended at the time.
I love it!
Color Rendering Index
Color Rending Index (CRI) is a bit more important than color temperature.
This is the measurement of how color looks under a light source compared to what it would look under the sun.
It is measured on a scale of 0-100, with 100 indicating that the colors would look as if they were under the sun.
If you are painting or staining things in the workshop, look for fixtures that have a CRI greater than 80 and you should be good.
Operating Temperature
This is an important one and could make you hate LED lighting or love them.
When I was doing research on LED workshop lighting, I found that some people had issues operating outside a certain temperature range, mostly when it was too cold.
Some people complained that their light would take longer to turn on during the cold weather, while others complained that they just didn’t work or flickered more during start up.
I do not recall if there were issues when it was too hot.
I needed to find something that could handle 20-30 degree F temperatures during the winter and somewhere around 115 degrees F during the summer.
Read the reviews and questions people have on Amazon or other sources to find a fixture that doesn’t cause issues due to temperature.
Here is My Recommendation
The fixtures that I purchased on Amazon in 2017 are no longer available.
However, the same manufacturer (Hyperikon) still sells similar fixtures and they are probably just a newer and upgraded version of what I purchased.
If I was to buy more 4 foot LED light fixtures, this is what I would be getting: Hyperkon 4 Foot LED Linkable Shop Light (Paid Link)
That is my recommendation. I am sure there are plenty of other manufacturers that would make you just as happy as Hyperikon has made me.
Just do a little homework first, especially if you will be purchasing multiples at one time.
