LED SHop Lights

[Whiskerfish]

Ran across these a month or 2 back. 100 bucks for 12 4 foot plug in led lights.
Actually it looks like they have gone up slightly.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B9W838VC?re ... tails&th=1

They are very cheap but they work excellent. My Shop is pretty large and they made a huge difference.

[Fred Camper]

There is also a coupon and if you buy the 4 pack they come out at $10 per 4 foot light. Pretty good deal.

[Lucien Harpress]

I'll have to double-check work to see how they compare to Lowe's lights, but that's REALLY good. We just did a big light reset (again, at Lowe's), and a bunch of the 4 ft LEDs were quite a bit cheaper than I remember them being. Both the whole fixtures and florescent tube replacements. It probably can't compete with Amazon, for sure, but I think we're getting closer.

UPDATE: Yeah, 8 bucks for a two-tube fixture? That's pretty darn good.

[Sidecar Bob]

I find buying locally is often less expensive than buying on Amazon.

That's a pretty good price for complete fixtures but I wouldn't want 6500K lights in my shop except maybe as task lights if I had on other choice (I have sewing machine lights on the drill press and lathe that are probably about 6000K). Simply put, no matter what the manufacturers try to tell you daylight is actually about 4300-4500K.
6000K or higher is "cool white", so called because it is closer to the blue part of the spectrum.
2300-2500 is "warm white" (closer to the red part of the spectrum) and is usually preferred by people who are used to dimmer lighting.

When we moved here I bought a bunch of cheap 2x48" T12 fluorescent lights for the garage. They worked OK until ballasts started to fail; About that time they converted the lights at work from T12 to T8 and I was so impressed I bought ballasts & tubes and converted mine too.
But there was never enough light near the overhead doors; If I put lights on the ceiling they'd be blocked when the door was open, if I hung them on the door they'd be on the wall when it was closed and hanging fluorescents so they'd be below the opened doors would involve substantial support structures.
In 2016 I found LED strip lights on eBay for a reasonable price so I bought some and put up light L girders made from 1x3s to support them and the dark end of the space became the bright end (I liked them enough that I bought more and did the same thing in my parking space too).

LED shop lights 1.JPG

Around the same time I bought a case of 48" T8 LED light tubes (you have to wire out the ballasts for them) and installed them in lights inside the house, including the basement shop. They provide much better light than the old T12 fluorescents but they have the same limitations as any tube light fixture (mostly straight lines only) so when the T8s in the garage started to fail a couple of years ago I decided to change to LED strips as they need to be replaced. I started by removing the fluorescents in the garage shop plus a couple of LED light bulbs and doing this. Note that there is a little bump in the far left corner to add a bit of extra light in that corner and the end of that strip disappears behind the wall (where the oil tank used to be, now the shop closet). Those 2 loops of LEDs are quite adequate for the 10x12' room plus being attached directly to the ceiling I have a bit more headroom the odd time I need to move something long around in there.

23 - LED strips shop ceiling.JPG

[Track T 2411]

Bob, by strip lights I'm assuming they're the rope light type, enclosed in a plastic tube? How did you mount them? Do they simply plug in to a regular outlet?

I'm looking at something like this for my shop: Aoretic LED Garage Lights Bulb 2 Pack -80W, 8000LM 6500K Led Shop Light with 3 Deformable Panels, Basement Barn Light Garage Ceiling Lights, E26/E27 for Garage, Warehouse, Shop, Basement https://a.co/d/7GfJzfz

That was the first one that popped up. I'll probably look for one closer to the 4-5k range.

[Sidecar Bob]

Rope lights are designed to project light from all sides of the "rope" so they are basically a string of LED lights wrapped around a round core with the whole thing encased in a clear plastic sheath. If you attached them to a ceiling (or any flat panel) half the light would be wasted.

In their most basic form LED strips are a long, thin printed circuit board with SMD (Surface Mount Device) LEDs (Light Emitting Diode) and the circuits needed for them to work on one side and often 2 sided tape on the other side. It can be found on eBay and Aliexpress in various widths & lengths and any number of colours and voltages (I usually buy 12V daylight white or warm white, 8mm or 10mm wide in 5m lengths) because they are handy for odd low voltage lighting projects

Picture12.jpg

What kind of project? My wife Kay runs the sound booth at her church and a couple of years ago she asked me if there was any way to light up the cross because with no light it was always in the Pastor's shadow.
I stapled strips of white plastic to the back of the cross (about 1" wide because I had it on hand) for a smooth backing to stick the strips to (also acts as a bit of a reflector) and stuck 8mm LED strips to them (note that there's an extra layer of the white to protect the wires - they've been known to handle things carelessly)

LED strips mounted.JPG

Then I wired it to a 12V DC power supply

Lit up.jpg

For room lighting I use waterproof 110V LED strips. They are similar construction to the low voltage stuff except set up to run from a higher voltage (they come with a power cord that has a bridge rectifier built in because LEDs need DC) and unlike rope lights all of the LEDs face the same way. You can get it backed with 2 sided tape but I don't trust that to hold it on a ceiling long term so I prefer to get the plain back and use clips to attach them.
They make plastic clips to suit various sizes that can be used with nails or screws. I also prefer to use cable clamps at the ends and anywhere that the strip turns as in this pic

LED shop lights 2.JPG