The Best Garage Ceiling Lights For Complete Visibility
Whenever I start talking about the garage, I always get super excited. For me, it’s my sanctum. The three things I like to have installed first when building out any garage are the flooring, cabinets, and lighting. I can’t stress to you enough how important it is to have quality lighting, and I’ve found what I think are the best garage ceiling lights on the freaking planet.
Like most things involving me curating quality products for the garage, I’ve enjoyed this pursuit of garage lighting. To me, lighting is the piece of a garage that brings everything together. With our recent DMF and Cree Lighting introduction into the store, we’ve spent much more time building out our lighting solutions. Despite this, I realized we hadn’t spent much time producing content on why you want this stuff. I figured it was time to sit down and give you guys all the reasons why I think you need the best garage lighting in your garage.
OG Spec Lighting Solutions
I chose the Cree LS Series because of its ability to deliver high-quality light at high lumen outputs. The lights can produce up to 12000 lumens at 90+ CRI. Finding a 90+ CRI light at higher lumen outputs is tough, but that’s what you want. CRI stands for color rendering index, which indicates the light output quality or how good they look. That’s why the Cree stuff is so legit. You’re getting very bright, premium lighting.
Adding in the Lutron wireless dimmer switch gives you complete control of dimming the lights in each zone, making them easier to install/retrofit. When using PowPaks and Picos, you do not need a hard-wired connection between the switches and the lights.
Another solid option would be Prime Lights that are also great led garage lights. These lights are our basic lighting solution but a viable one. Prime Lights offer way better output than anything else you can get off the shelf or with the vast majority of online retailers. If you’re thinking about the crappy hexagon garage lights, don’t do it. They’re junk.
The cost will be less if you decide to go with Prime Lights, but if you’re looking for the absolute best lights on the planet, I’d highly recommend Cree.
You're getting:
- Lighting quality and color reproduction
- Linear options for the LS Series
- Multiple install options for the LS Series
- They work and pair well with Lutron systems
Polishing and Detailing
The first answer to “why do I need specialized lighting?” is obvious considering how OG got its start. If you’re detailing a vehicle, especially when it comes to polishing and coating, having a well-lit workspace is essential. When polishing, you want to see what is happening underneath your polishers and pads to get your finish as dialed in as possible.
After you get done correcting your car, at some point, you will likely pull it into the sun to check your work. Any car enthusiast who frequently polishes cars knows that the sun will show all the spots we miss when polishing. When you’ve spent hours polishing your car to what you thought was perfection, only to see imperfections in the paint that you’ll need to go back over is beyond frustrating. Legit garage lighting helps to prevent issues like this from happening.
If you can see the work surface better, you will have better results and less back-tracking. Dialing in your garage lighting will keep you from having polishing lights in your hands in between every pass.
The same is true for coating and every other area of detailing. If you are in the process of ceramic coating your car and happen to miss a high spot, the area will need to be polished and recoated. Higher quality lights and more illumination lessen the chance that any detailing issue like these will happen to you.
The Appearance of the Garage Space
Lighting can really change the appearance of the garage as a whole and all the stuff you have in it. What’s the point of spending a bunch of money on nice, quality things for your garage if you cannot enjoy (or showcase) the stuff you worked hard for? Janky lighting can destroy how a garage and the items in it look, making even the nicest stuff look like trash.
Having proper lighting and the correct color temperature will make everything in your garage look better. You will be able to enjoy the 10 hours of work you spent correcting and protecting your car every time you go into your garage. Being in the garage also becomes a much more enjoyable experience as a result of having a sweet lighting setup. I’m telling you, if you invest in your garage lighting, it will be well worth it.
Safety
If any of you guys have been following me for a long time, I think you know by now safety is not a top priority of mine. It definitely should be higher, but I digress. Any time you don’t have proper visibility in a space, especially when dealing with power tools, lifts, and vehicles, your chances of injuring yourself or being in a dangerous situation increase dramatically. The first step in avoiding issues like this is identifying or seeing them before they occur. If you are working in a garage with low, crappy lighting, your chances of identifying these issues are reduced.
The last thing any of us want is to be laid up in the house or have a family member injured due to us cheapening out on legit lighting. So, why don’t we make the necessary decision to circumvent these potential problems from happening?
The easiest solution, in my eyes, is high-quality lighting. It prevents you from not noticing that toy your kid left in the garage, the oil you spilled on the ground, or that cord your wife left out.