Shop Lights

[Greg Hampton]

My shop is in a pretty cool little cave in my basement. I've been working in it for a year winging it with minimal lighting and outlets. No complaints. How could I ? Regardless of all the bells and whistles, it's my woodcave and I've been building stuff. Even though it's small, I've been trying to outfit it with good stuff, mobile bases, smart layout, and all that jazz to make it work for me. So far so good.

Anyway, now I'm ready to install a central DC system (it's on it's way to my place). More on that in a seperate post. All of you helped me get there so I'll provide the scoop later.

I'm thinking it doesnt take a genius to decide to wire the ceiling, finish it and get my lights up before I start putting up some ductwork.

I've read a bunch of SMC (some rather dated) posts and various other ariticles for shop lighting. Like others, my head is now spinning, I'd like to take the approach of "give me your best reccomendations considering my scenario" and I'll take the consensus and move on it. Hopefully that'll save time and headaches for possible complaining about mistakes and asking for your help fixing stuff. Utilize / leverage all of your knowledge and experience I say.

Given the shop size above, in regard to the lighting I'd really like / prefer quality, quiet, pleasant, won't heat up my shop or me, mimimal shadows.. etc.. You know.. awesome lighting..

1. Exactly what make and model should I go buy and install that I can get at HD or Lowes.
2. I really like the look of some kind of wood ceiling, walls and floors for a woodshop. Even if it's particle board. So, do I really need to rock everything and paint it white ? Or will the lights you suggest take care of that ?

As always, looking forward to your replies.

Thanks in advance !

[Travis Rassat]

Have you thought about using track lighting? The nice thing about it is that you can focus your light where you are working. You could lay out quite a bit of track to start with - maybe on multiple circuits so you can only turn on what you need - and buy the number of individual lights as you need them. It's especially nice when you have portable tools and an ever-evolving shop layout.

Of course, the negative is that track lighting hangs down a little ways and I don't know how much headroom you have in your basement.

I'm in the final stages of getting the drywall done in my garage, and this is what I am planning to do once it is painted.

[Greg Hampton]

Thanks Travis,

Anyone else ?

[Dave Lessley]

If your ceiling is not finished and lends it's self to trough or recessed lighting that might be a consideration to maintain existing headroom. Fluorescent lighting will be cooler than most other types and more economical. Track lighting as mentioned allows you to put light exactly where you need it. Again depending on head room. Or a combination of both. There are several threads that have discussed this in the past. There are calculators out on the web that will allow you to calculate the amount of watts you need from the height they are mounted to the work surface with the amount of lumens required for how old and tired your eyes are. Once you pick how much light you need you can equate that back to how big and how many lights you need.

[Greg Hampton]

Well allrighty then. I'll wing it on the lighting.

How bout the wall color / material question ?

[jason tuck]

I've done some residential and commercial lighting design, to include calculations (zonal cavity and point by point)... and I went with regular twin bulb 4' fluorescent shop lights, with 32w T8 bulbs. You can do wrap arounds to dress it up a bit if you dont like the industrial look.

My shop is 20x20, and I placed six lights, evenly spaced (3x2 array). I went ahead and wired the 4 outboard lights on one switch, and two inboard lights on another switch so i can control the lighting levels a little bit. With all six on, its pretty bright.

Like Dave mentioned, there are a lot of places to do lighting calculations on the web. Lithonia has lighting calculation software named Visual that you can do point to point calculations on - if you are handy with cad type software you should be able to figure it out fairly easily. It has a 30 day trial if i remember correctly. Give that a whirl. Can be found at http://www.visuallightingsoftware.co...sp?SessionID=0
Dialux also makes a free lighting calc program, but its a bit more complicated to use.

When you run the calcs, i would recommend that you have around 100 ft candles per IES recommendations (based on a school shop class). Thats about the same brightness as a dr's exam table.

Be warned that lighting can be a double edged sword - too much and you'll see too many flaws, too little and you wont see enough.

Hope that helps!

Thanks
Jason

[Greg Hampton]

Thanks Jason,

I was already leaning toward the 32 T8's. So, I think thats a slam dunk.
I'll just go with the recommended spacing and will be set.

What do you think about my 2nd question in my initial post ?

Also, are there any code issues that you know of that would prevent me from using OSB or plywood on the ceiling ? Or does it have to be sheet rock ?

Thnx again

[jason tuck]

For wall and ceiling color, i would stay with relatively light colors. Paint has difference reflectance values, and a typical all white room would have 80% ceiling, 50% wall, and 20% floor. If you can get the reflectance value for whatever you are looking to do, you can input that into the Visual software to see how much changing from white to green can affect your lighting levels. Let's just say that doing anything dark will require more lights (which means more electricity, more heat, etc.) and make your cave even.. cave-ier?

[jason tuck]

Most building codes, residential or otherwise, would frown on using any wood alone as a interior wall sheathing material, unless it was on top of sheetrock. Sheetrock has the benefit of being fire resistant, which is why most attached garages use 5/8" sheetrock instead of 1/2" sheetrock.

Especially considering you have a large quantity of wood dust and electrical equipment in your woodworking area, i would recommend doing sheetrock and sheetrock alone. If you want to dress it up with false beams, etc. afterwards, that would be ok.

[John Sanford]

Use some, but not much track lighting, solely for focused point lighting. Unless you go with LED based units, track lighting will generate heat, probably a lot since most track lights these days are compact halogens.

For wall color, go with a very light color, preferably one similar in hue to the primary colors of the rooms where your finished pieces will end up. Essentially, if your home is primarily cool colors, then go with a white with a cool tint. If warm colors, go with white with a warm tint. This will insure that the reflected light from the walls/ceiling will be closer in color temperature to the reflected light in the woodwork's final destination.

The amount of light "saved" rather than squandered by using white/very light walls and ceiling is substantial. Ask anybody who took a dark room and repainted it a lighter color how much brighter the room becomes.

Last, there's the subject of the sheen. I would recommend going with a semi-gloss or satin. Gloss will give you too many harsh reflectives, while flat will smudge too easily, get dirty too easily, etc.

[Jim Becker]

For my shop, I had a "profound revelation" when I discovered how much more functional the T8 fixtures with daylight tubes in them were over my original T12 with soft-white from when I didn't know better. I'm planning on gradually replacing the less efficient fixtures over time to greatly enhance the light quality in my shop.

As to wall color, many, many folks subscribe to and love white-white walls. I have no problem with that, but prefer natural wood and more muted tones for a pleasant working environment. Should I hang an actual ceiling in my shop at some point, it will be white, however.

[Greg Hampton]

Well it sounds like 32 W T8's are the way to go with whatever color I choose.

From what you've all shared, it sounds like I can go with sheet rocked white ceiling, then sheet rock the walls and put some some type of wood sheets over that (light colored) to give me that woodshop feeling I'm looking for.

Kind of a combo of things to help with light but get my fix for the look and feel of my shop.

Thanks guys

[Samuel A. Livingstone]

Lighting is always tough between overall lightening and work task lighting at different spots. I will leave the arrangement to you. You maybe able to put some of the lighting between floor joists. Ceiling height is always a problem. Don't toss it way just to make it pretty.

My only solid recommendations are:

If fluorescent look at the different colors of tubes. Cool white may make maple look green. There are now several good tubes with wide spectrum. The ballast in the 4 and 8 ft. tubes may not be adequate for some bulbs. In the old days we were taught to mix fluorescent and incandescent lights.

2. The other is to get enough lumen's on the work surface. Mis cutting on the wrong mark or similar accidents make getting enough lighting is critical for delicate work. Shadows do not help when doing fine work.

[David Parker]

Hi Greg,

My basement shop space (I'm still putting my shop together) is 12 by 15 feet. I used five Lithonia GT8 2' by 4' Troffer fixtures from Home Depot for my lighting. Each fixture comes with four 32 watt T8 bulbs as well as a 6' flexible metallic whip for wiring the fixture. I found this to be a pretty good deal for the $44 per fixture I paid. While these were designed for suspended ceilings, they work just fine by bolting them onto the ceiling joists with lag bolts and large fender washers, and look good too. Just take off center cover over the electronic ballast to drill two mounting holes along the center line of the fixture.

I would have used six fixtures, but overhead duct work prevented placing the sixth unit. I have a total of 20 four foot, 32 watt bulbs and I find the lighting to be perfect. My original white walls gave too much glare, so when I repainted, I used a light beige, which eliminated the glare. The end result is uniform bright light throughout the shop without glare. I've been very impressed with these fixtures- instant-on and no noise at all. What a change from my previous experience with fluorescents. Good luck with your shop.

Dave