Questions about LED shop lights

[Gary Beasley]

If you are replacing the tubes, removing the ballasts and keeping the fixtures quite often you can get away with just using one tube instead of the two the fixture holds due to the extra brightness of the new leds. After putting the diffuser cover back on you may never know the difference.

 

[Bill Blasic]

My 8 footers do not have diffusers. I think the 8 footers come in two styles, one that uses the ballast and another style that you have to bypass the ballast. When it gets closer to when a replacement is needed I'll start researching in earnest.

 

[Mike Johnson]

Most lighting sources also have a CRI Color Rendering Index, the fluorescents came in 70%, 80% and 90% CRI
The higher rendering lamps cost more because they use superior quality rare earth elements to provide the color rendering needed.
Your typical big box store lamps are usually 70% CRI lamps.

 

[Doug Freeman]

Here is an article comparing CRI vs color temperature: https://www.ledsmaster.com/color-rendering-index-cri-versus-color-temperature-what-are-they.html

Mentioned in this article, and not related to any measurement I’m aware of (color, cri, lumens, etc) is what I’ll call apparent lighting. Its a function of lumens and color, ie for the same lumens a higher temp light will appear brighter to the eye. For me this seems to stop at ~ 5000k, and the light gets more blue but doesnt seem to be brighter. Compare a 2700k and a 5000k fixture/bulb of the same lumens - the difference is dramatic.

There are charts showing light wavelength vs intensity for various types of sources. Fluorescent lights have narrow bw of intensity whereas other sources have a broader sprctrum of intensity, which will appear brighter to the eye also. These apparent brightness aspects add to the difference when replacing fluorescent with led.

Most of us gift or sell stuff, and we dont have control over the lighting that will illuminate it, so it makes sense to me that we select what we like. Those that sell in galleries do have knowledge and possibly control over the lighting, and likely use that info for lighting choice.

 

[Ed Jarvis]

Oldie,

I use the tubes that are rated at 6500 Kelvin tempratue, It is much brighter .

Ed

 

[David Propst]

I upgraded my garage shop lighting a couple days ago. I had lens replacement surgery several years ago and in sunlight can easily read 1pt type. But bright light is the key for my vision. I wanted very bright even lighting with minimal shadows.

I put up 8ft LED flush mount strips from Amazon. They are super light and easy to install. The clips provided to install are flimsy, so following a reviewers tip, I used 1-1/4” conduit brackets. Two per strip.

My former set up was four LED 4 ft strips hanging over the lathe under the garage door track and one of those super bright led paddle lights on the one ceiling fixture.
This option allowed me to upgrade the lights with no additional wiring and no mess of extension cords.

Over the lathe is about 36000 lumens from 9-1/2 ft. They are linked and plugged into the ceiling garage door opener outlet with an Alexa plug module (“Alexa, shop lights”).

At about $18 a strip this was really economical. I bought a box of 10 and have three strips left for the other side of the garage actually used for a car.

They don’t quite cause snow blindness, but when I walk outside at night from the shop it does take some time to adjust.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081JPK9MC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_CFN1A1M5CZYQWRR3HQJE?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1