I have recently moved into my girlfriend’s house and have been organizing half of the garage into a workshop. The garage lights are the typical $10 two bulb fixtures. These things are awesome at throwing shadows and horrible for productivity. The picture actually makes it look a little worse than it really is, but you can see that the farther you get from the light, the darker the room gets.
When designing and setting up your workspace, it’s important not to forget the lighting. After twenty minutes of walking the light isle of my local hardware store, I decided to install an 8 foot high output commercial grade florescent light fixture. I chose the commercial grade because it’s assembled with better quality components and was only $15 more than the standard 8 foot light. The final bill was right at $100. This included the light fixture, two high output bulbs and a pair of clear protective plastic sleeves. The sleeves aren’t necessary, but i recommend them if you’re even the slightest bit as accident prone as myself. The install was easy and took me about an hour. I recommend a second set of hands if your installing one of these 8 foot fixtures. Here’s the result, and man-o-man is this an improvement!
The light is long and bright enough that even when the garage door is up and blocking it, there’s plenty of light.
And that’s the light upgrade. I’m planning to change out the second fixture soon but it’s honestly not necessary. My next project is a workbench and cabinets to store my saws and bench planes.
One Tool at a Time 