Making your walls reflective makes a huge difference. The best results I have found was using the thin 4x8' sheets of dry erase/melamine on the walls and ceiling. Plus you can draw on them.
Uh, wow. Just looked to see what that's going for. 66 bucks per 4x8. I priced out a 4x8 3/4" hardwood ply for a project and it was 90. That's some expensive wall covering!
If you are willing to do a little work equity..........you can get brite lites rather cheaply. Look on Facebook for someone selling those 2'x4' flourescent lights like they put in suspended ceilings. You can often find someone with a bunch of them for very cheap. Remove almost everything including the ballasts .....but keep the little tombstones at each end that you put the bulbs in. Purchase "single end" 4' LED bulbs. You can get a box of 20 of them from Amazon for LESS than $100 ($86) With the "single end" bulb all you need is to hook the tombstones on one end to power. You may have to trade a few wires around to get the tombstones all the same. I just made sure all the + was on one side and - on the other. Install the bulb and plug it in. You can wire them on your work bench rather than while on the ladder. It's really easy to do. Then keep adding lights till you have enough light. 20 bulbs will light your shop nicely. Another thing is that you don't have to put 4 bulbs in each fixture. Just wire the tombstones correctly, and only install 2 bulbs. If you want more light, add a 3rd bulb. Any 4 foot fixtures should work, even 2 bulb units if you can find them....its just that the 4 bulb ones are usually more available cheaply. I just did a quick looksee on Facebook and saw someone with some free/make offer ones and another for $10 ea and had been for sale for 12 wks. Lots more I didn't look at. The "single end" "no ballast" bulbs are the easiest to wire because the other end of the bulb requires no power. The pins and tombstone just hold the bulb in place. You only need power on the "single end"
SORRY....If that thing starts spinning....I will PUKE! God Bless Bill https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum...ar-transport-hauling-open-or-enclosed.614419/
I have a bunch of these 18w T5 4 ft LED lights over my workbench and toolboxes area. Also used them in my basement to replace the screw in bulb fixtures. Great lighting. Easy to mount and daisy chain up to 4 lights together. Pretty low cost to buy, I'm real happy with them. Have had for approx 6 years with msmy hours use and none have burned out or failed. See link here for example. https://www.ebay.com/itm/4049891152...NUHUvxiSvC&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
I picked up 4 ft LED shop lights from Costco when they had them on specials until I got enough to do my shop. The shop isn't done yet but I have some in my one car garage and they give a lot of light for the buck. The idea is to just wire switched plug ins up where I want the lights and run the wires off the lights to plug ins.
Before having cataract surgeries several years ago, blues were just "blue". But after, blues became more intense and almost annoyingly blue. The colder blue LEDs and flourescent lamps seem to mess with my color perception.
You might have noticed I had the wall and ceiling of my shop insulated with spray foam. That and a small window air conditioner keeps my shop about 80F in the summer and 60F in the winter, even on severe days. And I put up drywall painted white on the walls for brightness, Plan on painting my plywood cabinets white someday.
40 - 8 ft LED tubes in 32 x 32 work area . They are switched to use in the area I’m working in . Small adjustable LED on the lathe and drill press chucks . Cant get enough light when working on small stuff , great idea to plan ahead .
Lots of great ideas here-i'm sure they all work for the parties who use them. But, being simple as I am, I found that the light bulb screw in LED based lights from costco are as bright as most any Led based light. 2 pak for $29. I use only two in my garage and two in another garage I use-which is large. They light up all of it, and since they have 3 adjustable panes, I can aim it where I want it.
Put me in the screw in camp as well. Mine are direct replacement screw ins for standard bulbs. I have a three light directional fixture over my tool boxes, I only use two led bulbs in it. In the center of the 10' ceiling, I have a 4 light fixture taken from a old ceiling fan suspended by a couple of small chains with bulbs in all sockets, just those six bulbs light up the single carport up like daylight. In the additional flat roof carport, I placed three double socket directional fixtures designed for outdoor flood lights ran down between the two row parking with a LED flood light in each angled away from each other toward the parking space center. The other two of three I placed over the rear entrance shining out to light up the entrance and yard. I started changing my entire house over to LED several years back. I buy off the shelf 100W rated screw in LED bulbs at WalMart.
Also remember that almost all A/C powered LEDs display a flickering light much like and possibly more prominent than fluorescent lamps. If your are bothered by the high speed flickering of fluorescent lights or computer screens, you may have similar issues with LEDs. There are some LED bulbs that have some extra circuitry to make the flickering less noticeable but you probably won't find them at a deep discount at Costco.
That's true. Also why many of the LED lights have a frosted diffuser. It helps the flickering effect and also helps the directionality of LED lights.
I replaced 12 4' 2 bulb florescent lights with 23 4' led strip lights on a freshly painted gloss white ceiling ended up with great light. Bought $50 6 packs on eBay. Only had one failure in 3 years and that was because the screw anchors came out of the sheet rock and it fell down.
I switched to these 3 1/2 years ago and they paid for themselves in less than two years on the electric bill. Still very happy with them. I have (8) in my 1800 sq ft shop.
Use led's, you want regret it, When I built my 30' x 40' shop I used sheet rock and painted it white, I installed 15 double fluorescent light fixtures on three different switches. A few years ago I realized about half the bulbs were burnt out, I replaced the bulbs and rewired the fixtures so the bulbs were all I needed, the lighting is amazingly bright. HRP
I converted my shop and garage to 4 ft. LED twin lamp fixtures. Removed all the old fluorescent lights and did a 1 for 1 replacement, which saved me 50% on wattage used, but increased my lighting levels a huge amount! I looked all over and ended up finding a place on Ebay that sold the 4 ft. LED's for $14.50 each, but price was reduced if I bought more. Between the shop and garage I bought just 10 lights, but that reduced the cost to $13 each. They came with a 6 ft. cord, a pull chain to independently control each light, and a female socket at one end to daisy chain them together. So one outlet to plug the first fixture in, and then I just plugged each into the one before. I rarely use the pull chain switches as I leave them all on whenever I'm in the shop. I have one on a sensor that turns on whenever the door opens, and lets me grab something quick, and leave without turning on the whole shop.
I meant to mention that my strip lights using the white painted ceiling as a big reflector seems to me to put out more even light than my friend who put led tubes in his old florescent fixtures.
I’m in the four foot LED light camp. You can get them with the pull on and off string so that you can have as many on or off as you please. For me, I cannot have too much light! And they are easy to install! Bones
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