I’ve got a 46x46x14, hoping to get some insight from the forum regarding some lighting. I’ve attached an interior layout. The upper left area north of the stairwell is 16ft in length, for a work bench wall. I was thinking an even spaced 4x4 highbay layout around the 12-14k lumens for each fixture, in addition to something for the work bench area. I prefer 4K color rendition. The walls and ceilings will be white steel. The stairwell runs to the loft so it will be closed off to the full 14ft ceiling height.
It depends how much lighting you want. Four evenly-spaced rows of four of a 12k lumen highbay with the typical 18" suspension length will give you just under 100 fc with the white walls and ceiling if the stairwell wasn't there, and somewhat more since it is there and you will likely adjust your spacing to avoid the stairwell, illuminating a slightly smaller area than 46x46 with the highbays. This is pretty reasonable for a shop, but overkill if you are just parking cars in the building. If you are going to surface mount the fixtures rather than hang them, make sure you get ones that can be either directly surface mounted or get the little surface mount hanger brackets that put the fixture a few inches away from the ceiling. Surface mounting a typical LED highbay that isn't designed to be mounted this way can roast the driver that sits above the LED array and kill it.
I would recommend that if you are considering using LED highbays that you go look at some installations and/or fixtures in person. A 14' ceiling isn't all that high. It's the same height as mine in my building and only a few feet taller than many attached garage ceilings. It is right at the "low" end of the highbay mounting height range. These pack a lot of light into a small area and you may or may not decide there is too much glare from them. If you decide there's too much glare, the physically much larger linear-tube fixtures (T8 or LED equivalent) spread that light over a larger area. You will generally need considerably more of these fixtures, so it's a glare vs. amount of wiring needed tradeoff.
I would recommend a typical linear shop light (either LED or T8) hung over a workbench for task lighting.
I also prefer 4000 K color temperature. Fortunately you can get pretty much everything you can think of in that temperature.
