New Shop Lighting Question

[Jeff A. Smith]

Everyone... I have almost finished construction on a new 30x40 shop.

Concrete floors, OSB walls that will be painted white. The ceiling will be white and is 12' high.

I have 12 receptacles in the ceiling for lights.

I'd like to fill them with something that really blasts light on everything. My initial thought was to go with LED fixtures. I'm open to suggestions and would like advice on lumen rating and any other pertinent parameters I need to consider.

Any and all advice is appreciated!

Jeff

[Bill Dufour]

See if Costco still has $19.95 led shop lights. I saw led shop lights at Hoe Despot with bluetooth speakers built in.
Sounds like you still have the walls and ceiling open. I would drop a few ceiling light outlets down to plug in machine lights for things like a grinder, drill press, lathe, workbench etc. And one to plug in a radio. That way you will not leave them on by accident when you leave the shop.
Bill D

[Andrew Seemann]

This isn't directly answering your question, but I did my 24 x 28 shop with white painted OSB and white acoustic ceiling tile, and ever since, I have been wishing that I would have done the walls in a color other that pure white. The white ceiling and the white walls were a little too much. Adding stuff in the shop helped, but I now wish I would have done the walls in a slightly warmer color, like the tan of white pine or similar that would give good reflectivity and color rendition, but would not look like an operating room. Just something to think about.

Also, whatever fixtures you get, I would recommend going with a color temperature of "warm" rather than "cool" The "cool" daylight, is kind of harsh inside, especially if you are going to have white on the ceiling and walls. And it is especially harsh at night.

[Bill Dufour]

I understand that operating rooms are green because that is the opposite color from blood and raw meat. This allows you to rest your eyes by looking up at the green. What color is opposite of wood. I suppose it depends on the type of wood you use the most.. This has something to do with the color wheel. Maybe the opposite of battleship gray?
Bill

Cool or blue grays tend to have a very crisp, almost icy look to them. They are wonderful with bright whites in formal rooms and with blues and beiges. You can treat them almost like a light blue. Warm or yellow grays are complemented by creamy whites and warm colors like yellows, pinks and natural woods.Dec 5, 2012.

read the last two words of the quote and now we know why wood working tools should be gray.

[Andrew Seemann]

I always thought woodworking machines were grey because Delta got a great deal on surplus battleship paint left over from WWII:)

I remember working on old WWII machine tools that had a plate on them that said "War Finish - War Production Board". They seem to have been all green or brown. Not quite Powermatic green though.

[George Makra]

What kind of lighting you want will depend on the ceiling you have?
I have a dropped ceiling and I installed 2x4 Lithonia LED fixtures BTW I wish I had installed the dimming feature will I was installing the lights.
If you have hard lid you could do some thing surface mount.
If its open you may want to spray the underside of the roof white and that will dramatically increase the brightness with what ever light you go with,

[Jim Becker]

There are a whole bunch of threads here in workshops relative to shop lighting and the trend is very much toward LED at this point. But you need the correct number and type of fixtures to support both the space and the fixture height from the work surfaces. You'll may need "high bay" type fixtures, not inexpensive "shop lights" because of the 12' ceiling. The number you need is something that needs to be calculated by someone with the proper knowledge and with your shop configuration in mind. Start with your licensed electrician as they have access to resources that do this all the time. BTW, most lighting for this kind of situation isn't "plug in".

That all said, with my 8' ceilings and LED lighting with 4100 color temp, it's like being on the beach on a sunny day. I love what that's done for my shop environment.

[Rollie Kelly]

Jeff, first use as many windows as practical especially, on the north wall (finishing). If you are young, plan on getting old and make provision for additional lighting.

Put up as many fixtures as you think you need, if after a while it isn't bright enough add more. If it is too bright it is easy to remove lamps and you will have installed the added fixtures you will need as you age.

My shop is the same size as yours. I have over 60 sq ft of windows and 25 4' T8 fixtures with task lights on my drill press and band saw.

Rollie

[Peter Christensen]

I went through the same when I planned my shop but my shop is 1/2 yours in area. Poking around I found that 100 foot candles per square foot at bench height was recommended (minimum) for a wood shop. Well you don't find lights sold that way and after more research 100 foot candles equates to 100 lumens per square foot. Okay so now with your 1200 square foot shop you want 120,000 lumens of light or 10,000 lumens from each receptacle. So now you go looking for fixtures and find the 20 dollar Costco fixtures mentioned are about 2,000 lumens or so. That means you need 60 to light up your shop. You hunt some more and you find brighter fixtures of 4,000 lumens and you're down to 30 fixtures. Costs are higher for the brighter fixtures though, here more so than in the US. I didn't go the conversion bulb route because I would have had to buy new fluorescent fixtures and toss all the ballasts plus buy all the new bulbs. That is going to be expensive unless you have a source of free old ones. I didn't. Sourcing and buying LED fixtures locally was going to cost me well north of a grand for my shop. :(

I went looking to China to buy direct, well through Alibaba, and found a company that provided the UL approval documentation for all their lights which my electrician demanded or he wouldn't install them. They have a variety of lights and I ended up selecting 4,000 lumen, 5' long x 2" wide & 1 1/2" deep, 6000K units that can be conected together with the provided cords (up to a max of 5) for $27US each delivered to my door. Took a little less than 3 weeks from when I ordered. I did find out later that if each fixture has its own box and not chained though each other they can be dimmed. Nice if you want to put in extra and tweak the lighting to suit the work you are doing. You can talk to them and pick fixtures they make to best suit your needs and if you are buying enough they might haggle a little. I didn't know that so maybe I could have saved another buck or two a fixture.

Light temperature is a personal preference. I wanted noonday sun bright and 6,000K is close to that. Jim's 4100K is more like morning or afternoon light. The LED spotlights in my kitchen and living room are 4,000K but I prefer the whiter light for working.

[Brice Rogers]

Jeff, I have a 24 x 36 workshop with white walls and a white ceiling. So it is a little under 2/3rds the size of your shop. I have ten dual 4' 4000K LED fixtures. I used to have a single warm white bulb but I found the color temperature to be objectionable. So a total of 20 bulbs and the shop lighting level seems pretty good. The current light level seems about 40-50% brighter than the old fluorescents. I have a bunch of shelving units for storage so they soak up some of the light rather than reflect it like unobstructed walls. If your shop is more open and don't have a bunch of shelves and pegboards, then your lighting would be very good.

I did place some ceiling extension cord drops. to some of stand alone tools (like drill press, belt sander, grinder, etc.). I should put in more drops. If you are going to be running some high amperage machines off of a ceiling drop, you are likely to want to put it on its own circuit. That way, if you do "pop" a breaker, you won't also lose your overhead lighting.

I would think that it might be helpful to organize the overhead lighting receptacles so that you could turn on some fraction rather than all of them. I find that sometimes I only need/want lights in the end of the shop where I'm working.

What is nice about having ceiling receptacles for your lighting, is you can always add more lights if needed and/or concentrate some lighting in certain key areas.

For most of my shop, I put quad receptacles at a distance of about 42" off the floor and roughly 6 feet apart. At the time it seemed like an overkill but it turns out that it wasn't. I have either 3 or 4 receptacles on each 20A circuit.

[Joe Jensen]

My new shop will be built in about 16 months. I am going with these, 1 1/2" by 1 1/2" by 8 ft. They connect end to end. 32 fixtures 8ft each, or 288 ft of fixture delivered for $1300.

https://www.lonyung.com/displayproduct.html?proID=2273585

[Justin Ludwig]

Take your floor plan to your local wholesale light supplier. Around here it's called Wholesale Electric Supply (WES). In my hometown, it was Locke Supply (HVAC, Electric and Plumbing). Ask them for a lighting plan. All they need to know is your ceiling height and desired lumens on the floor. They'll send it to lighting companies that do that for a living: Lithonia, PLT, etc.

When you get the layout back with their recommended fixture you can use that information and go shopping.

Lithonia sent me a layout with LED fixtures that were gonna cost me $250 each ($4250 total). I took the lumen rating and found LED ready fixtures on 1000bulbs.com and Hyperikon bulbs on Amazon.com and outfitted my shop for $1250 and got the same lumen output.

[Greg R Bradley]

With 12' ceilings, these will work great: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Lithonia-Lighting-6-Light-Fluorescent-High-Bay-IBZT8-6/204718161

2 separate circuits inside in case you want 3 bulbs on one switch and 3 on another. You can put LED fixtures in 3 for the advantages that LEDs have and 3 high quality florescents in the other 3 for the advantages that they have.

Costco shop lights are suitable over a workbench but just silly for this. It would be like a business sending someone out to buy a truck and they came back with motorcycle because it was cheaper and then went back and bought 20 more motorcycles to get the weight capacity of the truck. Of course, in this case you would need more like 100 of those costco shop lights. They are great for $20 for what they were designed for, buying one or two for TASK lighting over a bench of something like that.

[Frank Pratt]

My new shop will be built in about 16 months. I am going with these, 1 1/2" by 1 1/2" by 8 ft. They connect end to end. 32 fixtures 8ft each, or 288 ft of fixture delivered for $1300.

https://www.lonyung.com/displayproduct.html?proID=2273585

Those are nice looking fixtures, but there are a couple of things to consider. I've found that, generally speaking, the plug in connectors on end to end strips can be a source of trouble. If there is a problem with a connector in the middle of the row, you have to take down all the fixtures between it & the end of the row to repair it. Same problem if there is a driver or chip failure cause it doesn't look like those fixtures are serviceable.

[Peter Christensen]

I have the 5 foot long version of those fixtures. For mine there are 3 clips that screw into the ceiling with one screw each, so to take them down you only need to release the clips with a flat blade screwdriver . To put them back up, press into place. Because the clips are all in the same line you can pry the fixtures to slide them apart to get the little connector out. They also provide a short wire connection (about 8") so you have the option of using them to zig zag the lights or go around a corner. Pull the short connection out if you want to remove a light without removing them. A driver or chip failure is really no different than a bulb failure with a conversion bulb, and most LED fixtures are the same and can't be serviced.

The one thing a buyer needs to know, and Lonyung does state it on the website, is that the maximum number of fixtures that can be strung together can total no more than 200 watts. My 5 footers are 40 watt so I would only be able to put 5 together. I have 4 lights in 4 rows on 2 circuits so I can turn on half the lights if I like. The 8' lights Joe is going to use are bigger so he will only be able to connect 3 together in a row.

[Mike Wilkins]

I got some LED lights from the local Sam's club; 2 bulbs each and can be linked together. Puts out a lot of light for a reasonable cost.

[Jim Becker]

Folks, the OP has large shop coming and a high ceiling. The typical LED shop lights that many of us use are just not going to cut it for his space.

[Art Tripp]

I've have a 30' x 40' x 10'h pole building / workshop and it seems like we have a similar overall design. The shop was built a couple years ago and I spent countless hours pondering every detail, particularly the lighting.

I can sympathize with the thought process and wanting to do things right, as well as how mind boggling everything can become the deeper and further into specifics you reach, and wanted to share my choice.

It appears you may already have the lighting receptacles in place so it is likely you have an idea of where you would like to place your units to best suit your needs.

After looking at a wide array of options I eventually chose the Commercial Electric (Home Depot brand) 4' Bright / Cool White LED Direct Wire Ceiling Lights - Model #54283141. In my experience, I would not hesitate recommending these lights and have found them to be quite bright, work great in both hot and cold (well below freezing) temperatures, appear to be of good quality at a fair price, are easy to install and have a pleasant appearance, and the low-profile removes many concerns regarding accidentally bumping into one of the lights. I was admittedly somewhat apprehensive in my purchase (not just in these lights, but in any of the lights I had to choose from) but once installed, I haven't looked back and have found myself more than satisfied with the end result.

To give an idea of the illumination, I have attached several pictures.

I installed a row of five lights to illuminate the workbench, tool and storage shelving and also use this area to work on smaller items such as a mower, chain saw or such.

A second row of five lights was installed between the two overhead doors and (in conjunction with the first row of lights) this provides ample lighting to work on vehicles and larger items. You might note that this row aligns between the overhead door tracks and then offsets several inches to bypass the attic access ladder. Our Tundra typically resides in this spot but due to the weather we've had and what is predicted to come, it has swapped places with the van to allow easy 4wd access and is sitting in our attached garage with the Kawasaki Mule that we frequently use on the trails and around our Tree Farm.

I only placed three lights in the third row and originally intended to use this area for storage (mowers, cycles, kayaks, etc.). Since then, I have decided to dedicate the space to my woodworking projects and my plans are to place a bandsaw, woodworking bench, wood storage and other items here. At that point I am planning on installing two additional lights and I previously allowed the spacing so this row of lights will align with the first two five-light rows. I will note that I have worked in the area with the present lighting and it is well illuminated, so if I left it as-is the lighting would be good. As I continue to tack on the years in retirement though, the benefits of having extra lighting becomes all the more evident and I'd rather have too much than too little available.

In the far end of the shop, I installed two lights to illuminate my outdoor equipment / tractor area, and a third light to provide lighting for my large-item storage shelving as well as the bench vice / work table area.

Should you decide to install twelve lights in your ceiling, I would envision the lighting providing more than adequate illumination and feel you would be quite satisfied. My lights are divided among five separate switches so I can adapt to whatever area I am using, and with eleven of the lights turned on, the shop is quite bright. Your additional two feet of overhead space may make some difference but I wouldn't anticipate a huge amount and while working at floor level in my shop all seems quite good. Your choice of white for the ceiling and walls is wise and will provide much benefit.

Good luck with your choice and enjoy your new shop!


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[Greg R Bradley]

Folks, the OP has large shop coming and a high ceiling. The typical LED shop lights that many of us use are just not going to cut it for his space.Yes, the IBZ lights I linked above will give you lots of light for 12 lights with 12' ceilings. The Costco or Sam's Club shop lights suggested would require 114 for the same light.

We might want to define "lots of light" and decide if you want lights mounted much lower like at 8'. I certainly wouldn't.

[Alan Lightstone]

I understand that operating rooms are green because that is the opposite color from blood and raw meat. This allows you to rest your eyes by looking up at the green.

I've worked in ORs my entire career (it's what I do), and I've never heard that. ORs change color depending on the era they are built in. They, IMHO, are fads, just like the colors of kitchen cabinets, walls, carpet, etc... I can easily date an OR by looking at the color of the walls.

We tend to avoid calling it raw meat, BTW. Turns off the patients.

Personally, I like the idea of warm wall colors. I may do that myself in my new shop.

[Art Tripp]

As a follow-up... I had a little extra time today so I disconnected a couple of the center lights and left one of my switches off to take pictures of the shop illuminated with 12 lights (more comparable to what you may be looking at).

Overall the lighting is quite sufficient and would be adequate for many needs. For detail work and the little things though, having additional light can be a plus - though this can also be accomplished with additional lighting in a task area or with a portable lighting unit.

I hope this helps and a comparison of lumens & other factors in different lighting options should help provide some guidance on your path.

Good luck!


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[Bill Dufour]

I believe LED lights are instant on to something like -40 or lower.
Bill D

[tom lucas]

My shop is 20 x 25 x 8. I retrofitted six 4-bulb fluorescent fixtures with LED bulbs, 5K temperature. I think they were 15w each. Took out the ballasts. I paid $8 each for the LED bulbs. The shop is really bright now. However, there are also 6 regular bulb sockets on the ceiling with heavy duty fixtures suitable for 100 w bulbs. I use those too with regular incandescent 100 w bulbs. The combination of the two kinds of light give better texture and color to everything. I still use a work light at a bandsaw I have in the corner. The LED's are really bright, but I prefer the combination because of the better contrast it gives. You just can't have too many lights, in my opinion. Multiple lights, multiple types, multiple switches.

[David Ruhland]

Im new to woodworking so i am finally excited to add something instead of always asking questions... Lighting is def one of my strong points....in my shed i have several of these high bay lights https://www.homedepot.com/p/Lithonia...t5+high+bay+ho (https://www.homedepot.com/p/Lithonia-Lighting-IBC-454-MV-4-Light-T5-White-High-Output-Fluorescent-High-Bay-IBC-454-MV/202838871?keyword=t5+high+bay+ho) Notice they are the T5 HO my ceiling is 16 feet high. They provide AWESOME light and have two circuits so you can turn 2 of the bulbs off. The bad part is the electric bill has gone up about $20 per month since they have been installed. I have them installed approx 8 feet apart. They put out about 20,000 lumens (equiv to 1000 watt bulb) per fixture at 216 watts each. They are an awesome light, but a lil pricy after you buy the fixture and the 4 bulbs at about 10 bucks apiece. They can not be "surface" mounted as they get warm and heat will cause premature failure. I have no regrets and would install them again in a heartbeat...HOWEVER there is another simpler, less expensive light method out there... The corn cob lights can put out around 10000 lumens a piece and you simply screw them in. They even make some that have hangers. I have 4 of these in my shed as well and light my "assembly" area with 4 of them. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Euri-Lig...duct_304247336 (https://www.homedepot.com/p/Euri-Lighting-Corn-Bulb-200-Watt-White-Integrated-LED-High-Bay-ECB54W-1150/304247336?cm_mmc=Shopping|THD|B|0|B-BASE-D27L+Exterior+Lighting&mid=TiWDiZES|dc_mtid_8903vry57826_pcrid_7359857260 1099_product_304247336). Whatever lights you install you should be aware of the "kelvin" temp on the bulbs. Most seem to be in the 4000 Kelvin range which ok for me doing woodworking, I always try to find bulbs that are close to daylight. (5000-6500 kelvin) Hope this helps a lil bit.

PS Spray the OSB sheets before you hang em! If your using KILZ Latex primer spray it on with a drywall texture gun...