You might be using your garage for multiple purposes like storing things, parking your car or working on DIY projects. No doubt that all activities are different but all of them do have the same requirement of thorough lighting. But in reality, most garages are not well-lightened. Check out our best garage lighting ideas to prevent strain in your eyes and have a good time while working in your garage.
Best Garage Lighting Ideas
If you are wondering about how to turn your garage into a bright and well-lit one, we are right here to help you renovate your garage’s look. For this purpose, you will have to adopt some tips and tricks. We’ll also take you through a list of the best products that you can buy for lighting up your garage. Let’s not delay it any further and get started.
How To Light Up Your Garage?
A well-lighted garage will ultimately result in making it safer for you, enhancing the visibility, benefiting productivity, and raising the aesthetic value of the place. Enhancing the lighting system of your garage requires some easy to follow steps mentioned below.
Size Of Your Garage
Before starting to buy the required garage lights, it is critical for you to take proper measurements of your whole garage. This will help you to better estimate how much lumens you need to install. If you opt to follow the lighting handbook by the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES), it suggests you use at least fifty lumens per square feet in case of garages at residential sites.
For workshop sites the guide recommends the use of at least three hundred lumens per sq. ft. As a prevalent rule, you can go for fifty lumens per sq. ft. if you are going to opt for ambient lights. In the case of accent lighting, seventy-five to eighty lumens per sq. ft. will do the job for you. But for a site where you are going to work professionally, three hundred lumens per sq. ft. will be sufficient.
Ceiling Lights Are Not Enough
Do you think about installing ceiling or overhead lights only? For a very well lighted garage this is not enough. There are multiple lighting categories available on the market which serve different purposes. If you want your garage to be lighted up properly, you should use the following types:
- Ambient Lighting
- Task Lighting
- Accent Lighting
Ambient lighting is the basic illumination for a given space. Ambient light basically works as the overhead light in your garage. This makes sure there are no dark corners in your garage.
Task lighting is intended to be brighter so that it can enhance visibility. In this way, working on a particular task becomes way easier and efficient for you.
The focal point in case of accent lighting is on a specific spot or item. Most often, people use these lights for highlighting certain masterpieces. Popular varieties of accent lights include wall mounted lights, strobe lights, overhead ones, torches, etc. Accent lights work to give an appealing effect to the overall area.
Wattage Of The Bulbs
With old fluorescent tubes the wattage was in important factor when deciding for the right brightness. But with modern LED lighting the wattage became less important. Knowing the recommended lumens according to the size of your garage you can calculate the overall lumens needed and divide it through the number of lighting fixtures you want to install.
Choice And Positioning Of Fixtures
Before choosing the right fixtures, you need to go through the details of each type. Here is a brief description:
These types of fixtures typically incorporate integrated lights inside door openers of garages, and also linear or circular mounted lights that attach on the ceilings.
You can find task lighting fixtures in the form of long strips that are adjustable and can be mounted on the ceiling. The lengths of these strips vary from four to eight feet. Another form is known as trouble lights, which are trapped in a cage-like structure. You can hang these lights with the help of their hook where needed.
These pendant-like fixtures hang on the ceilings or mount on the walls. These are enclosed in a bracket or sconce.
Positioning
Let’s see how to find the best position for the different types of garage lights:
In the case of ambient lighting, you will want it to spread the light uniformly from the top. Thus place the door openers with integrated-in lighting at the central position of your ceiling. However, if you are about to install several fixtures, make sure that they are present at a uniform gap from one another.
These lights are important for your work and have to be really bright. But won’t their brightness be too sharp for your eyes? For this intention, it is important that you mount them overhead in such a way that they drop a couple of inches from where you are standing during your work, so the light does not disturb your eyes and bounces away.
In the case of accent lighting, you should place them directly over the details that you want to highlight.
Use Fluorescents Or LEDs?
Who isn’t concerned about the electricity bill? We all do worry about this and for this reason we often tend to find energy-efficient products. But the question is how are you going to light up your garage while making sure that the bills do not surge?
For saving energy it is helpful for you to choose LED or fluorescent lights. Both types promise you to offer equivalent lighting as old incandescent bulbs by using relatively lesser wattage. When using these lights and comparing the bills you will notice a drastic change.
High CRI Bulbs
CRI is the short form for Color Rendering Index and refers to a scale from zero to a hundred percent, which indicates how precise a selected light in its portrayal of color in comparison with the source of relative light. Higher CRI implies the greater capability of rendering true colors. If you purchase a high CRI bulb of 85 to 90, it will deliver a perfect outcome and increase the aesthetics of your garage.
Motion Sensors
Installing motion sensors in your garage is yet another factor that can serve you the purpose of the best lighting. Here’s how. Motion sensors will help you out by decreasing the surge in your bills even if you do not use LEDs. How so? Well, these sensors will look for a moving sensation at the place, and if there is no movement, these sensors will turn off the lights automatically. Hence, no energy will be wasted.
Importance Of Natural Light
What else can be better or brighter than natural light itself? Consider having a window or ceiling window if you are investing in the renovation of your garage. The natural light that you will get through these windows will brighten up the whole garage at day time and increase the warmth as well. This factor will prove as another useful step in saving energy.
Which Are The Best Garage Lights?
Are you making a plan on updating the lighting system of your garage? If yes, we present you five of the most amazing products with all their key features that you will find in the market.
Tanbaby Deformable LED Garage Light
Key Features:
- 6000 lm of brightness
- Consumes 60W of power
- Lightweight
- Motion-activated LED
Hyperikon Foot LED
Key Features:
- Motion Sensor technology
- Senses from 80 feet
- Sturdy
- Long-lasting
- Easy installation
- Top-notch quality
Barrina LED T5
Key Features:
- 2200 lm brightness
- Consumes 20W of power
- 6 LED bulbs included, and all are linkable
Sunco Lighting Utility Shop LED Light
Key Features:
- Pack includes ten bulbs
- 4000 lm of brightness
- 40W of energy consumption
OOOLED Linkable Flushmount LED Light
Key Features:
- Four thousand lm brightness level
- Consumes only 48W
- Light in weight
- A singular fixture of LED
Closing Thoughts
The importance of lighting at your garage in undeniable. Whether you are using it just for parking your car, for work purposes or decorating it with your favorite showpieces, the lighting part remains consistently crucial. Be sure to understand the types of lightening, the importance of measurement of your garage, wattage and lumens. With the help of this article you will find the best garage lighting ideas to improve your lighting.
You can also head on to find some promising products that will transform the whole look of your garage into a better one. The above-mentioned five products have proved their worth by generating positive feedback from multiple customers. Investing in the best products will not only update your garage lighting but also prevent you from a sudden surge in the electricity bills.
