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Best bang for the buck LED bypass 4ft 2-lamp strip light as of 7/12/2017:
Here's the
Diva Lite Spec sheet (linked)
Here's the
Diva-Lite DLC report showing almost 135 Lumens per Watt.
Diva Lite UL Listing File: #E472082
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Yes, the title was meant to get you here. There are way too many threads about the exact same: “What light fixture should I buy for my garage?” question. Should you go LED or Fluorescent? Strip Light, recessed cans, screw-in bulbs of any flavor, … the options never end.
Disclaimer: I have been designing lighting products for over 30 years, primarily for the military and specialty markets. I do not design consumer grade residential lighting. Designing a 200 Lumen per watt fixture is easy, but not cost effective (yet). I have no affiliation with any company mentioned and I have nothing to gain by sharing my research. Everything stated is my opinion. I am human.
Typical Garage/Workshop Lamp options:
• Bare F54T5HO lamps produce too much glare when mounted below 15 feet. If you like them, put them in a wrap style or louvered fixture to cut down the glare.
• 400W Metal Halide can be quite efficient, but also produce too much glare when mounted below 15 feet. Additionally a 20,000 hr. 36,000 lumen 400W MH lamp will only produce 25,000 lumens after 8,000 hrs. = 30% light output loss.
• All T12 and T12HO Lamps should be considered obsolete. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some very efficient T12 options out there.
• Recessed Can type fixtures do not have the beam spread necessary to produce high lumen shadow free lighting unless you use a ridiculous amount of them.
• LED ballast-bypass 4ft retrofits are your best bang for the buck option. Long life, excellent efficiency and immediate full brightness in cold temperatures. Just be aware that there’s no shortage of no name Chinese LED bulbs and fixtures with questionable specifications and no third party certification.
• F32T8 Lamps are designed to be mounted below 20 feet and there’s quite a head spinning variety out there. Some are capable of lasting 84,000 hrs., providing 100+ lumens per watt and a reasonable 85 CRI.
• You can have higher CRI in both fluorescent and LED, but you will sacrifice efficiency and light output. I’m not going to address that here as the vast majority of people do not need CRI higher than 85 in their garage.
Here’s the original comparison spreadsheet, though as of this post edit (7/12/17) it's now almost 2 years old so all links and data are questionable:
Lighting System Comparison. (I'll have to get around to making it mostly LED related.)
Here's an Excel viewer if you don't have Excel:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=10
Spreadsheet was created in Excel 2010 and has xlsx extension.
You can also open and edit in
Google Sheets.
