Have a pretty mundane question: My unfinished basement has a low ceiling, no more than 7 feet, with E26 bases distributed throughout. I'm not doing any work down there, I just want it lit better when I'm rifling through storage and the like. I thought about just using some LED floods, but I'm not sure if they'll distribute light well from such a low height. Anyone have any thoughts what might be the best bulb for my application?
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basement lighting
- Thread starter rpthack
- Start date
what's wrong with normal bulbs ? they spread the light as good as anything IMO. if you're worried about them hanging down, raisethe boxes an inch or 2 into the rafter bay
when I had a similar issue with low clearance in a basement storage area I mounted the lights in the dead space between floor joists so they didn't hang down any lower then the joists....got the light I wanted without loosing precious headroom(that particular room was about 6'2 clearance)
You can recess to some extent but don't put the whole bulb between the joists. The big part of the bulb really needs to be in the open or you get major shadows. You can overcome it to some extent but it takes a lot of lights
AffableCurmudgeon
Well-known member
How about an e26 to 2 prong adapter with a home depot 2 prong 3 ft led shop light?
American Locomotive
Well-known member
Yeah, I'd just get 3 or 4 foot LED fixtures with frosted lenses and slam them right up against ceiling!
BD1
Well-known member
I used the 4' LED shop lights from Costco.
Great on sale for $20.00 each.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Great on sale for $20.00 each.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
rburke65
Well-known member
You could mount 4’ led strip lights on the bottom of the floor joists
Have a pretty mundane question: My unfinished basement has a low ceiling, no more than 7 feet, with E26 bases distributed throughout. I'm not doing any work down there, I just want it lit better when I'm rifling through storage and the like. I thought about just using some LED floods, but I'm not sure if they'll distribute light well from such a low height. Anyone have any thoughts what might be the best bulb for my application?
LED floodlights like other floodlights have a pretty narrow beam pattern compared to "open" bulbs like your standard E26 sockets. 7 feet is a really low distance for a narrow distribution fixture like that, it will look like you used spotlights. I would either replace existing E26 bulbs with brighter ones, add more E26 sockets, or use fluorescent or LED strip fixtures screwed to the bottom of the floor joists.