Garage Lighting With Open Doors

[SN95ohh]

Hi all,

I did a search and only found some old threads.

Does anyone have a good solution for home garage lighting when the garage doors are open and covering about half of the ceiling space? I do a lot of car wrenching and it has always bothered me that the front half of the car is illuminated and the back half is dark.

I have thought about mounting lights to the door and using a cable carrier to hold the wiring. I have also thought about just mounting lights to the sides of the garage door tracks and angle them a bit in.

Anyone have good solutions or tips?

 

[Moosefire]

Depending on how heavy the light is, or how handy you are, maybe make some brackets as drawn below...?

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

 

[SN95ohh]

I definitely thought about something like that too. I'll add that this side of the garage has a double door and I will have two vehicles in the bay that I would like to work on so I'm worried that lighting in between the cars will be poor.


Sent from my iPhone using The Garage Journal mobile app

 

[Thunderpigeon]

https://garagedoorlighting.com/

 

[ollie09]

Depending on how heavy the light is, or how handy you are, maybe make some brackets as drawn below...?

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

If it's a standard 7' door, that would put the fixture down pretty low. I have the same problem. Was going to try and mount a LED fixture at a 45* angle where the wall meets the ceiling. Kinda like a paint booth has. Hoping others have solved this problem.

 

[Brandon_oma#692]

I have 2 4' led fixtures mounted to a 16 or 18 foot wide door at the top edge facing down at a 45 degree angle. It works out pretty well when the door is closed or open. The door is opened manually and the cords were carefully routed. Not ideal but worked out much better than I thought.

Electric in my garage is completely inadequate. I need to add a subpanel and start from scratch.

 

[aandpdan]

My garage door has windows so I mounted the set of lights so that when the door is open, they line up with the windows.

Not perfect but it helps.

 

[nastorino]

I've been wondering the same thing. I'm considering suspending a couple fixtures from the ceiling to the height of the tracks, either by means of Unistrut or threaded rod.

 

[jon72vega]

This is an old picture, but here's how I hung a light below the overhead door.
I purchased a pair of brackets that hang from the overhead door tracks.
I also used a piece of EMT to span the length between the brackets, some angle iron for resistance to bending, and clamps to put it all together.
s 45 light under overhead door by jon72vega, on Flickr

 

[Outlander]

My 'plan' was to run 2 lights parallel to the tracks

 

[pbon]

I thought about this when I did the layout for my 23x29 garage that has one 9’ and one 10’ wide door. I suspended lights next to the tracks next to the walls and one inbetween the two tracks in the middle. My tracks are only a 8” below the ceiling. I was concerned about shadows from shining against/through the tracks if I mounted them to the ceiling. Everywhere else they are mounted to the ceiling. It’s not ideal to have lights close to the sidewalls but often things aren’t ideal. What I did works pretty well. My lights are on the sides of and inbetween the cars—no need for me to focus on their roofs. I also don’t have lights directly over the cars. I have 6 lights in the half of the garage that is closest to the garage doors and 10 lights in the rear half, which is where I do more work. 4 of those rear lights are above the workbenches that run along the rear wall, perpendicular to the rest of the garage lights.

I have read of people installing LED lights onto the backside of their garage doors, but no need for me to do that. For me it is fine to have a little less light in the front where the doors are. If I really needed better light in that area, I probably would have installed a row across the front above the doors like the row in the back above the benches, maybe with a separate switch.

 

[driftpin]

I have about 9 ft from floor to my LED shop lamps. I ran two 1" X 4" PT lumber for beams close-to the ledger boards on the 2-car garage side walls (the ledger boards support above-the OH garage doors storage space for light, bulky items ilke Christmas stuff), and they are hung-off home-made brackets in the middle of the OH doors. Plenty of light, out of the way, and easy to wire. I added a pair of duplex outlets between the OH garage doors, up-high, at the level of the doors in an 'open' position.

The pic was taken after I trial-fitted the luminaires, I have the wiring neatly-secured with GB clamps, and added a fifth luminaire between the OH doors, in the middle.

See post #5 for more pics, including the brackets I made to hang the luminaires, using the existing OH door tracks, in between the OH doors. I used a combination of Simpson Strong Tie brackets and plywood (some with wood, some without) and using machine screws and or pop-rivets.

https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=423327&highlight=door+FEIT

 

[dkroth]

Someone here put LED tape lights right on the door itself. I don't know how the wiring worked.






.

 

[Oldbear]

I mounted a few lights on the walls (the picture is old and mid-build). I borrowed the idea from my autobody friends' shops/paint booths. I've also purchased an underhood light (clips to the hood). This thing has been a game-changer - I wish I'd bought one years ago. It lights up the entire engine bay and I've used it under the vehicles no two.