Shop Lighting Upgrade
NOTE: While I am not a certified and licensed electrician, I do know enough about basic wiring and electrical work to keep myself safe. For anyone that wants to do this type of work in their own homes, contact a local licensed electrician if not comfortable handling it yourself.
When we first moved into the house in September 2017, there were only two light fixtures in the garage. There was a double-tube fluorescent fixture centered on each garage door, each about 8’ from the back of the garage. These didn’t provide a whole lot of light. Like the rest of the house, the bulbs were changed out with LED lights instead. Not only would they give better light, but they were cheaper to use over the long haul. This improved the lighting only marginally.
In March 2018, I decided to add more light to the workshop so I could actually get some work done. I already had two hanging LED shop lights from Costco that I bought for the rental house garage, although I only used one in there. I went ahead and bought five LED hanging shop lights from Rockler.
The light at the top is the old fluorescent fixture with LED bulbs installed, the middle is a Rockler shop light and the bottom is a Costco shop light.
Based on the shop layout I had at the time, I arranged the five Rockler lights in a ‘U’ shape around the main tool “island”, and I hung the two Costco lights over my miter saw station. Since I only worked in the two-car garage section, I didn’t need more lights on the one-car side.
Here you can see the orange blocks represent the Rockler & Costco shop lights around the tool island and above the miter saw station. The aqua-colored ones are the fluorescent fixtures w/LED bulbs. There’s a lot of space that is lacking good lighting.
However, in June 2020, I noticed that I had some darker spots in the shop that were right in the area I typically took pictures of my projects, so that wasn’t going to work anymore. I thought about just hanging more shop lights, like the ones I already had, but figuring out how I would link all of the lights together was proving a royal pain. It was looking more and more like I would have to have a couple more outlets put into the ceiling just to be able to plug in the other lights. Couple this with the fact that I was looking to expand the lighting to the whole garage, and this was not looking like a worthwhile solution.
I am NOT a Professional
I’d seen many YouTube makers that had updated the lighting in their workshops with shop lights from American Green Lights. Their LED shop lights provided way more light than my hanging shop lights did, and they provided more true-to-life daylight. This meant much better lighting for pictures or video (should I get into that in the future).
I specifically checked out videos by Jay Bates at Jay’s Custom Creations (second video here), Shawn Stone at Stone & Sons Workshop and Jason Bent at Bent’s Woodworking for an idea on how to go about setting up lighting in my shop. Jason’s video was the best, in my case, because the layout and size of his space was almost the same as mine. Not to mention he did a basic overview on the wiring, which was a nice touch. Shawn’s video on wiring was also great as my electrical situation was similar to his. Jay had all of the other information regarding the actual numbers and data when it came to the lighting, which proved invaluable.
This is Jay Bates’ lighting in his old shop.
This is the lighting in Jay Bates’ new shop.
Here is the lighting in Jason Bent’s new shop.
I eventually went with the layout seen here.
All of the lights would go from the front to the back of the garage, except for the four that are over the area around the miter saw station. I needed to work around the attic access and the air vents in the ceiling when configuring this layout. It was going to take 25 lights to outfit my garage in the way that I wanted. That many lights wasn’t going to be cheap, but thankfully Shawn had a coupon code that still worked and I was able to get everything at 10% off (thanks for that, Shawn). I also had to get a big roll of Romex and a couple of junction boxes to replace the light fixtures that were already in the ceiling.
Removing the old fixtures wasn’t too difficult. I made sure to only take one down and leave the other working until I had enough lights installed to still have workable conditions. Since there was now a hole in the ceiling where the wiring was run for the fluorescent fixtures, I installed these ceiling fan boxes on the ceiling to give myself a starting point when running the Romex.
Installation was pretty straight forward. All but a couple of the lights attached to the ceiling with screws into drywall anchors (the lights are not heavy at all). The wiring was easy as well. Just cut the Romex to the proper length, strip the insulation back, connect the wires to each other by color and that’s pretty much it.
I could have done the whole thing by myself, but having my arms up in the air supporting the lights and walking up and down the ladder a thousand times tires you out pretty quick (at least it did for me). I did the one-car section completely by myself, and it took about a day to finish. I did close to half of the two-car section alone, as well, but asked Lisa for help with the rest because it was too tiring for me, plus it takes so much longer.
I Have Seen the Light
Once all was said and done, the moment came to turn the breaker back on and flip the switch...WOW!!! What a difference in the garage. There was bright and even lighting throughout the entire space, save for one small section right next to the A/C unit (I knew this going in and it’s still enough light to work, if necessary). The cost and effort were well worth it. I wish I’d have had this done when having the house built, but we all know hindsight is 20/20.
I can’t recommend American Green Lights enough. Their products are awesome, and the customer service is excellent. Two of my lights had damaged wires and they were quick to send replacements (thanks Jim Uno).
Now I can install my old shop lights in my shed, whenever we get around to getting one in the back yard.
***UPDATE: February 2023***
It’s been about 2-1/2 years or so now since I installed all of these lights in our three-car garage. I’m happy to report that everything is still working just fine now as they did on day one.
What has surprised me the most was that none of the cable “staples” holding the romex to the ceiling have let go or fallen down. I figured they would be dropping constantly, given that they are just attached to the drywall ceiling. Nope, not a single one has dropped.
This might be the best investment in my workshop that I’ve made since moving in back in September 2017.
