The advent of LEDs continues to attract the attention of many because of their many advantages. LEDs represent a bright future for the lighting industry.
The entry into LED lighting is experienced today due to its high demand. This has caused the invasion of LED store lighting and gave consumers a variety of workshop-style lighting.
LED shop lights are the new LED version of fluorescent shop lights. Shop lights are usually used in garages and workshops (the origin of the name) and require simple yet economical lighting fixtures to illuminate small areas such as tables and workbenches.
This article aims to provide you with all the information you need to know about LED shop lights. We will be discussing:
- Why you should buy these lights?
- LED shop lights types and usages
- What is important in buying LED shop lights?
- Top LED shop lights in the market
Let’s get right into it!
Why Do You Need to Buy LED Shop Lights over Others?
Saves money:
Not only do LED lights lower the cost of the energy they use, but they also lower maintenance costs by reducing the need to replace bulbs and paying for disposal fees.
Plus, bonuses can offset initial installation costs.
Lasts longer:
The life cycles of LEDs are measured in tens of thousands of hours, which is exponentially longer than other lights. Even after the nominal number of hours has passed, you still receive enough light from the LEDs when they start to go out.
Better for lighting:
LED shop lights offer excellent color rendering, brighter focus, and better ambient lighting to enhance the look of your facility or home and offer you a better overall experience.
Provide a better work environment:
They are not dazzling and distort the eyes. For this reason, you will find that it improves and promotes workplace satisfaction, which in turn increases your productivity.
Also, unlike traditional lightings, such as fluorescent tubes filled with mercury, LEDs do not break, improving workplace safety.
Different Types of LED Shop Lights to Choose from
Currently, there are 4 main types of LED shop lights. They are:
1. Linear LED Shop Lights
In these kinds of LED shop lights, many light-emitting diodes are packed together in a long, narrow tube, creating a strip of light.
2. High Bay LED Shop Lights
High bay LED shop lights are generally used in open areas of fifteen feet or more, such as garages, gymnasiums, furniture stores, supermarkets, warehouses, etc.
Lighting with this LED light is economical, has a longer lifespan, is environmentally friendly, and can be used in different areas.
3. Low Bay LED Shop Lights
Low bay LED shop lights are used to illuminate areas with low ceilings from 12 to 20 feet below ground level.
In general, a low bay light is defined as light intended for roofs less than feet above the ground, and low light options have diffusers at the bottom of the fixtures. It emits light, which reduces glare caused by a low ceiling.
The result is more natural and pleasant lighting in rooms with low ceilings, whether at work, at home, or in play.
4. LED Strip Lights for Workshops
LED strip lights are flexible circuit boards filled with LEDs that you can connect to almost anywhere you want to add bright lighting with various colors and brightness.
What to Consider When Buying LED Shop Lights?
How many led shop lights do you need?
First of all, you have to find out the square footage.
Then multiply the length of the room by the width to get the square footage of the room. An example: if the room is 10 meters wide and 10 meters long, the square footage of the room will be 100 square meters.
Then to determine the required lumen, multiply the square footage of your room by the foot-candle needed for your space.
A 100-square-foot living room, for example, which requires a 10–20 foot-candle, needs 1,000–2,000 lumens, and a 100-square-foot dining room that requires 30–40 feet candles needs 3,000–4,000 lumens.
- Check out the brightest Barrina led shop lights if you have a large workshop.
Regular LED shop lights? Linkable LED shop lights?
Regular LED shop lights are cost-effective, easy to set up and waste less light. However, linkable LED shop lights have added features. They operate independently of one another when installed in a series.
If you use a 5-foot grounded power cord along with mounting chains, they will be excellent for ceiling suspension in garages, basements, workshops, laundry rooms, and utility rooms.
They are energy-efficient alternatives to regular LED shop lights.
What light color should you buy?
The type of color we recommend depends on the specific use or activity, as well as your personal preferences.
- Generally, lower color temperatures create a more relaxed or “warmer” ambiance.
- A 5000K gives a neutral and clear white light that allows a better color perception that the lesser ones cannot provide due to their yellow skew.
- If you want to recreate the conditions of natural light, 6500K is the ideal color temperature.
What is the best CRI?
The CRI is a little challenging to understand as it is not immediately visible just looking at the light emitted by a shop light.
The CRI value ranges from 0 to 100, which measures how accurately objects appear under a light. The higher the score, the more accurate.
Well, what is a sufficient CRI number?
For non-color essential tasks, we recommend that you buy LED shop lights with a minimum of 80CRI.
To improve the appearance and accuracy of colors, we recommend 90CRI or higher.
Do I need a LED shop light with a motion sensor?
The most popular and possibly the most important reason to buy LED lights with motion detectors is the added safety.
The motion sensor LED lights can detect movement in the dark and will illuminate to avoid unwanted people or wild animals.
- Try Koda if you wanna a motion sensor and remote led shop lights.
Is it easy to install?
LED lights come in large coils that you can easily install even if you have no experience in electrical installations. A successful installation requires a little planning in advance to ensure you have the right length of LED and power supply to fit.
Most LED shop lights include a chain that allows fixtures to hang from the ceiling. Some will also allow for installation flush with the ceiling. Some LED shop lights will consist of reflectors on the fixtures’ side to direct the light downward.
Uses of LED Shop Lights
Garage: They are ideal for workshops, utility rooms, and closets. These LEDs can replace up to 4 bulb fluorescent strip lighting fixtures.
Commercial workshop: They are ideal for replacing conventional fluorescent lighting in warehouses and other large spaces. For commercial spaces, these lights offer many benefits, in addition to the previously mentioned advantages of LED lighting.
Integrated LED Shop Lights vs LED Shop Light Retrofits
What are integrated LED shop lights?
They have LED chips installed electronically directly in the device (i.e., integrated) so that there is no “lamp” that can be replaced.
With the long life of LED technology, the idea is that the LED light will continue to emit enough lighting until it goes out.
What are LED shop light retrofits?
They keep the lamp separate from the fixture, which changes them. This usually involves using a fluorescent shop light fixture and replacing the fluorescent tube with an LED tube.
A fluorescent shop light fixture will almost always have a built-in fluorescent ballast.
Final verdicts
First of all, integrated LED shop lights are the preferred choice.
These fixtures are made around LED lighting, the latest technology. As a result, they usually do not contain features such as “lamp holders” and actually have LED emitters on the fixtures.
In theory, the LED retrofit approach tries to bypass the design of the old fluorescent tube. This means that the LED tube is limited in mechanical and electrical compatibility, as it must be installed in shop light fixtures originally made for fluorescent lamps.
This, of course, can be seen as a disadvantage in terms of product performance and options.
The reality, however, is different. The economics of the lighting industry is less obvious.
In particular, the large number of fluorescent lights in today’s buildings has made LED tube retrofitting cost-effective and a viable alternative. As a result, a lot of work has been done in designing and manufacturing LED tubes.
For the end-user, this means that a variety of LED tubes are available at competitive prices, and in some cases, it makes sense to continue to use fluorescent shop lights and retrofit them with LED tubes.
Lighting Advice
I recommend integrated LED shop lights if:
- You are looking for maximum lighting efficiency and energy savings.
- You want a simple plug and play lamp without replacing bulbs.
- You’re not interested in fluorescent lights, or you can’t buy them.
- Bright color and quality settings (including “Upgrade”) are not very important to you.
I recommend retrofit LED shop lights if:
- You have fluorescent shop light fixtures already or can buy them at a lower price
- You have more strict needs when it comes to the quality of the color, such as color rendering
- You want to easily change your lighting regularly (for example, changing out different LED tubes for other color temperatures)
- You are hopeful about the future development of LED tube lighting and want to be able to switch to a new LED tube without changing the hardware
- You are comfortable having to adjust fluorescent shop light to bypass or remove the ballast
How to Convert Fluorescent Shop Lights to LED?
Converting used fluorescent shop lights to LED bulbs is relatively easy, and there’s a high advantage of superior lighting, lower energy consumption, and durability for screw-in bulbs.
LED bulbs fit into screw-in sockets for compact fluorescent with ease but become more complicate when converting fluorescent fixtures to include LED tubes.
1. The simplest way to achieve conversion is completely replacing fluorescent fixtures with brand-new LED fixtures. A $100 budget might fetch you this.
2. Another option includes modifying your current fluorescent fixtures to accommodate UL Type B Tubes, commonly sold as direct wire bulbs or ballast bypass.
Here, the fixture requires rewiring to bypass the ballast, either removed or left in place.
Verdicts:
I recommended that when rewiring the fixtures, you should label to show that only UL type B bulbs can be used.
The second option is also cost-effective because you won’t need to replace older ballasts, and that can save you up to 75% per fixture in new ballast costs.
FAQs
1. What is the brightest led shop light?
Perhaps you are wondering which is the brightest LED shop light that can lighten up your space. This answer is only dependent on your light needs and where the light is going to be applied.
2. Do LED shop lights work in cold regions?
LEDs can thrive in cold regions because they are semiconductor light sources that emit light when an electric current flows through them. Owing to this fact, they remain unchanged by adverse weather like cold temperatures.
This means that you can turn on LED shop lights even in the cold.
Conclusion
Conventional fluorescent shop lights are designed to fit 4-foot fluorescent tubes, which, compared to incandescent bulbs, offer longer life, lower electric usage, and balanced color temperatures in daylight. This made them very attractive for lighting in workshops.
With the emergence of LED technology, the efficiency exceeds that of fluorescent lights, making the LED versions of the shop lighting easy.
LED shop lights have a longer lifespan and higher efficiency than their respective fluorescents.
Still, for the most part, they possess the same linear fluorescence factor and are usually available in 4-foot lengths using a very similar attachment pattern.
Buy one for your shop and get brighter light today!
