I’ve been chugging along when time allows on installing a ceiling and lights in the garage over the last few months and am happy to say that these two major milestones of my garage nearly complete. If I had to put a title on this long overdue update, I think either “Making possibly bad decisions, or at the very least controversial ones” or “Obsessing over what should have been a simple task – the story of my life” would be appropriate. The inspiration for those two titles comes from the fact that I’ve been thinking about what type of lighting to install and how to finish my ceiling since I decided to clean up and finish my space, and have changed my mind so many times I've lost count. I also wasn’t sure how well my ideas would work in real life until I tried them. Now that the project is nearly complete, I’m happy to report that I’m very pleased with the direction I took.
Before I could finish the ceiling, I needed to figure out lighting since pulling wiring is way easier when the trusses are exposed. After considering a bunch of different options, I finally landed on the idea of recessed lighting. This is the “possibly bad, somewhat controversial decision” number one. Doing a search for threads on GJ about putting recessed lights in your garage, you’ll quickly see that many are quick to steer members away from them for various reasons. In reading through posts from people who had actually installed them, they seemed to be generally pleased with their decision for the same reasons I liked them – clean looks, less likely to be damaged while handling material, and even light distribution throughout the space. I really liked the idea that no matter where I might be standing in the work area, my shadow wouldn’t affect my ability to see whatever I was working on.
When I was looking for recessed lights, I soon stumbled on these neat panel mount LED lights that don’t require a big can sticking up into the ceiling. They are an absolute breeze to install. Links to the ones I ultimately purchased are below, but there are dozens of them in various color temps, sizes, and brightness levels to choose from. At roughly $9-10 each, they also fit the budget nicely. The main reason I went with the 4” vs the 6” really came down to the fact that I thought it would look better to have smaller fixtures in my relatively small space. A few things to pay attention to when buying this type of light – make sure they are IC rated (can be in contact with insulation), are compatible with triac dimmers (so you can use traditional dimmers instead of having to get special LED dimmers), and have a decent CRI rating (how well they render color accurately, these are supposedly 90 which is apparently pretty good for LEDs).
The only word of warning about the lights I purchased. As I’ll explain later, I ended up needing 16 lights. Since they didn’t sell a 16 pack, I purchased a 12 pack and a 4 pack from the same seller to get the quantity needed. Even though packs are supposedly the same product, in my case, they were slightly different – I’m guessing just a running change on component suppliers to the factory. The driver boxes that came with the 4 pack are slightly smaller, the male/female plug ends are swapped, and the light color temperature is just a touch different. Wife doesn't see the difference. Maybe I’m just being OCD on the color temp issue, either way, it wasn’t different enough for me to send them back.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KRS7C4S/?tag=atomicindus08-20
Next I played around in CAD trying to find the best way to arrange the lights in the garage. I used the beam angle specified by the manufacturer to make a shaded (hatched) circle of what the expected diameter of coverage area would be at 40” (or was it 48”? I can’t remember…) from the floor (my best guess at a typical work height for myself). After about a dozen or so arrangements, I finally landed on a 4x4 grid of lights (16 lights total) spaced 60” apart from each other with the grid centered in the garage.
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You’ll notice that the light is more concentrated in the central area of the garage, but that coverage is poor around the edges. The plan is to eventually install task lighting over the workbench and tool box area so it was acceptable that these areas were under lit. More importantly to me, the coverage is pretty even – no hot spots, and very small, if any dim spots. I took the layout a step further to see what the distribution would look like at floor level and found that I had a nice even distribution throughout the space with only minor dim spots in the corners – hopefully any dropped hardware rolls to the middle of the garage and not the corners.
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One thing worth discussing – how much light is enough? That is a confusing, and often times controversial rabbit hole of a topic that I’ll allow you to explore for yourself. To keep things short, I’ll just say that (using a comparable light on the tool linked below) my area should theoretically be lit to around 20 foot-candles at working height. 20fc is, depending on the source you refer to, recommended for general office work. However, 20fc is not even close to the numbers that get tossed around if you research this subject here on GJ. Most of what I read recommends a minimum 50fc, and all the way up to 100fc as the goal for lighting. This would be the “possibly bad, somewhat controversial decision” number two. All I know is that bright white overlit spaces have always bothered me. They put me on edge and the last thing I want is to be anxious every time I spend time in my garage. Only time will tell if I made the right choice, but working in the space with most of the lights hooked up has been an absolute joy so far.
http://www.visual-3d.com/tools/interior/
Okay, so I’ve got the lights and I’ve got the layout, the next step was figuring out the ceiling material and color. I knew I wanted something with a little bit of character, so for the longest time I was planning on either galvanized corrugated tin or T&G pine, but that idea was eventually scrapped. Trying to think back on it now, I can’t even remember what prompted it, but all the sudden one day I got the idea in my head that my celling should be black. This would be “possibly bad, somewhat controversial decision” number three. Normally, using a dark color in small space is a bad idea. However, I’d read an article somewhere online where the author made an interesting point about how dark ceilings, when lit properly, can make the ceiling itself sort of disappear, tricking the mind into thinking the height of the room is actually higher than it really is. The author was talking about finishing basements with low ceilings, but I figured the same could be true for my garage.
I will admit, this is the decision that I had the lowest confidence in. Even when I went to buy paint, I hemmed and hawed at the store for probably 20 minutes before I finally just said “F-it” and grabbed a can of flat black industrial paint. While installing the boards on the ceiling, I was still second guessing myself. It wasn’t until I got most of the lights hooked up and flipped the switch for the first time that all that angst about my decision was put to rest. The amount of light was exactly what I was hoping for (maybe a touch brighter than I expected) and the black ceiling works! It actually does feel taller in there now and the room does not feel dark at all. Wife, who waited until after the fact to admit that she thought I was absolutely crazy for painting the ceiling black, loves how it turned out.
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As it turns out, taking a photo of a flat black ceiling with a bunch of recessed lights is actually a bit difficult with a crappy cell phone camera. I’ll dig out the DSLR once I get everything wrapped up and try to take some pics that more accurately reflect what I see. My teaser pic from yesterday was me getting the last two sheets of OSB painted – luckily we’ve had a nice run of mild weather that I was able to finish painting without having to use a heater to cure the paint. I’ve just got a few sheets to hang this weekend and I’ll be ready to go back and touch up the paint around the screw heads. Next step after that is to blow in some insulation. It’s weird to think that I’m only a couple of days of work away from actually having a warm shop this winter.
Since you've made it this far, I figure I might as well share a life update as well. Coming this April, we’ll be adding kid #2 to the family – a boy this time! To say that I'm excited would be an understatement. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore my daughter, but I'm also very excited to have a son as well.
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New kid means we need a new family hauler, right? 2017 Cadillac XTS...
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Actually, the main reason we got the car is because Wife got promoted and had to turn in her company car (no more sales calls, managing now). We got a solid deal on it thanks to Wife's negotiation skills. What really surprised me was how affordable it was compared to its similarly equipped models from the competitors. It was actually cheaper than the Impalas we were initially looking at, even though its basically the same car.
Again, apologies for such a long post and making everyone wait so long for an update, its just been so crazy lately. Thanks for following along, hopefully I can do better with keeping everyone up to date on progress now that things have slowed down a bit.
