Lighting Advice needed

[bonecrrusher]

I have a ~30'x30' shop with 9.5' cielings going up right now - and I need some advice on shop lighting.

My last shop had the standard 2 bulbs and was around 19x20 - I upgraded to 4 Troffer T8 housings from Lithonia - and mounted them in the ceiling.

I had GE 48" T8 bulbs. The bulbs where Daylight - produced 6500K and 2600 lumens.

I was looking at the Utilitech Pro LED Wrap lights @ Lowes:

http://www.lowes.com/pd_1345-43921-MXL-301_0__?Ntt=1345&UserSearch=1345&productId=4480261&rpp=32

It produces 4000K and 3200 lumens.

The fixtures and bulbs for the t8 lights run about $20-$60 for the housing and $8.98 for the bulbs.

The Utilitech Pro light is $69.98 per unit.

So price is about the same between the LED and the florescent lights - but the LED looks like it has more lumens - but the brightness is a lot less. I really liked having the 6500K in my old shop as it was super bright for working on my cars - and detailing in there.

 

[Platonic Solid]

No way to confirm any claims from Utilitech since they don't publish IES files.
3200 Lumens at 42 Watts is only 76L/W, which is poor.
3200 Lumens/$70 per fixture = 46 Lumens per Dollar, which is poor.
$8.98 bulbs are some very expensive lamps = you can do much better.
A single bare F32T8 $3 Lamp puts out around 2800lm (depending on ballast factor).
4000K and 6500K are color temperatures which has nothing to do with brightness or Lumen output. 6500K is very cold bluish light.
What you should be looking at for detailing is CRI (Color Rendering Index) and CQS (Color Quality Scale).
LED is still much more expensive than Fluorescent. See spreadsheet here: Lighting System Comparison