I'm finally building a garage and I'm looking at LED lighting. I'm curious what everyone uses/prefers for garage lighting color temperature. My existing garage has 4100k T12 bulbs and the color is white to my eyes when the bulbs are new. However they dim and turn more yellow as they age. I'm finding it difficult to find affordable LED fixtures in 4100k. Most new integrated LED fixtures are 6500k which is way too blue for my liking. I have found a few that advertise as being 5000k. If I already had a bunch of 4' fluorescent fixtures I could easily buy LED replacement bulbs in 4100k but I don't.

Looking online I get more confused than when I started. I think every manufacture has their own idea of what "warm white", "soft white", "bright white" and "daylight" are. One article I read said that 4000-4500k is good for a garage but then said 5000k is the norm for showrooms and when you will be doing detailed work.
The article also said that paint looks the best at 5000ish color temp. I went to the local big box store and had a look at their lighting display. One fixture toggled back and forth between 3000/4000/5000k. The 4000 looks best to me but maybe in an automotive garage setting 5000k would be acceptable. Just curious what everyone prefers. Thanks

My eyes are old.

When I updated the lighting in my garage a couple of years back I went with 4, 4' 5000k led tubes. What a remarkable improvement, originally had 2 100w incandescent bulbs, lol.

You may be able to go to a good hardware store and check out the colors at the lighting display.

I bought the 4' LEDs from Harbor Freight - $19 each on sale - a couple years ago, and they were a huge improvement over the double 4' fluorescents I had.
I beleive they're 5000.
Much brighter with half the bulbs. Just plug in & voila !

I like 5000 to 5600. Bright but not glaring and everything stays it's normal color whch is great if you are doing any wiring.

You can't have "too much" light. And ideally - IMHO - you want that as close to "daylight" as possible. That said, I still have florecents in my shop and all the bulbs are labelled "daylight".

I agree.
Human eyes function best in bright light. The job requiring the brightest light is brain surgery. That says it all for me.
5000K is the best color temp for any work environment, IMO.

I buy 4100k T8s. 96 bulbs in my main shop. To me they are pretty white. I won’t go any higher.

I updated a few yeas back to double (string?) LED fixtures. The ones I bought are adjustable with dip switches. They're set on Daylight which I think is 6500? Not sure but I need to tone them down as my eyes start watering after ~ 8 hours. Eye drops help but I just need to find the time to dim them down a bit as I am concerned about the long term effects. When I had fluorescent I always went with daylight bulbs and was fine. But the LED's seem to have a different idea on what daylight is IMO.
I have another post going on monitors due to the brightness of one. Just swapped it out an hour or so ago and OMG what a difference.

After trying a couple different bulbs these have met my needs. Have them in the garages and my work shed.

What I would add is that you also need to look at lumen output when choosing a fixture or bulb. My garage has 4’ Florescent fixtures. I looked into replacing the tubes with the led tubes and discovered that they were not as bright as a t8 5k fluorescent tube.

Also . Led sounds great , but they often fail sooner than a fluorescent. Keep in mind they are just cheap junk from CHINA . At least with a fluorescent you can replace tubes or ballast easily and inexpensively .

T5 fluorescent are even brighter.

I used 5000k LED's. This is what that looks like.

I had fluorescent in my garage and I replaced them with LEDs from Home Depot. I used the kind with the LEDs built in to the fixture and thankfully i haven't had any failures yet but if I do I will have to replace the entire fixture. This was about 5 years ago so I don't even know if they still sell the same exact fixtures I bought. Next time would definitely get LED fixtures with replaceable lights.

The reason I went with LEDs was because I live in the northeast and in the winter the fluorescent lamps took about 20 to 25 minutes to start lighting up. Unfortunately, my garage is not insulated and the fluorescent lamps don't do very well in the cold.

I used the highest K rating I could find at the time. I think they were 4100K. If I were doing it today I would go with 5000K.

Having the walls and ceiling white really helps too.

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Although white is not IMO real practical for a garage floor, I use light grey.

i went with 5000k units when i replaced all the lighting in the garage.
12, four foot lights in a 28x32 space really light up the place !

I bought some 5K led bulbs from Lowes a few years ago, Best investment i ever made. Don't remember the brand but i kept the box because i will be using them again. It's awesome when it's cold out and you turn on the lights and bam, Instant light compared to waiting 20 minuets for florescent lights to warm up.

Looking at the bulb pricing vs built in I don't see an advantage price wise or am I missing something ???

I like the 5000K light during the day.

At the other extreme, I use pure green LED light only for middle of the night bathroom visits.
It makes a difference in getting back to sleep.

If you are installing lighting you can get a permanent style. If you already have florescent fixtures just get bulbs.

Using LED bulbs in typical T8 fixtures means(?) the transformers are still in the circuit, and if so, seems to me that negates some of the power/heat/reliability savings LED's are intended to provide.

I did a lot of research and had a lighting expert design my layout to hit my lumens targets (he did quite well with hitting the targets). I have over $10K in my lights. They RAB commercial lights and are true 4' led lights (not tubes) and are 5000 degree. I am quite happy with them.

I used to go with lower temperatures in the old shop with fluorescent tubes, but have migrated to the 5000 degree with LED and I do like it.

What I was looking at was something similar to this. Using 8' lights instead of 4' would minimize the visible chords on the ceiling. You can daisy chain them together as well.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/184431987316?

The garage addition is as big as the city would allow. Being on a corner lot, I had to stay 25' from the property line on the side and on the back. The addition is 27-6-0 x 26-6-0. The trusses are vaulted so I can eventually fit a 4-post lift in there. The garage doors travel up the slope. My thought was to put a total of 4 rows of lights along the ceiling where the flats meet the slopes. At the ends I'd run another 8' light parallel to the trusses to illuminate the tall walls.

I've never seen a segmented garage roll up door store/rest on an incline.

But don't overlook the one important comment made so far here that effects the ambient lighting more than almost anything else, the brightness of the interior, floor, walls, and ceiling, It also helps kill shadows.

Not necessarily. These are the LED's I used and the installation removes the ballasts.

That seems almost pointless today, kind of like converting a 57 chevy to EV power.

I fail to see how. The new LED fixtures I've seen have integral LED's. When they fail you replace the entire fixture. By modifying a fluorescent fixture for LED's, you just replace the bulb when it fails. If someone has a burning desire to retain the ballasts with an LED, those versions are available....but why?

Because quality LED fixtures are designed for 50,000+ hrs in most cases (5.7yrs continuous), I expect they have a better warranty then a bulb alone, and they are optimized optically, electrically and physically for an LED application, would be my viewpoint.
Both versions still have the same components cost wise for LED applications, the only difference is the housing/packaging, mounting.

Most of the time when you retrofit LED tubes into an existing T8/T12 fixture the instructions direct you to re-wire the hot feed it directly to the lamp holders (tombstones). Cutting the old flourescent ballast out of the circuit.

This is how mine is done. Liftmaster 3800 on the wall.

Very beneficial to avoid interference with a car on the hoist.
Interference to the door, the door track, and the standard opener that normally hangs down in the middle of the tracks is eliminated.

People are usually shocked I can have an 8' bed crew cab truck all the way up in the air, can open and close the door if I want,
and have a pretty modestly sized shop. The celling and high lift door were pretty important to reaching that goal.

On topic-That's just a couple weak temporary lights in the picture, not what is used to work.

Well that answers that question.

And when and LED fixture fails, which they will, you will be replacing the entire fixture rather than just a bulb.

No need to state the obvious, in 20 years, it will be outdated and old tech anyway most likely, you read the 5.7 years continuous right?

If you believe that lifespan claim, well you'd be disappointed.

I doubt it'd last 5.7 years intermittent. None of mine have.

The last time I was in the lighting area of our local Menards (think home depot), there was not much choice in any LED lighting. You could but the light and fixture (didn't say "replaceable lamps" or not), but those fixtures were all odd sized (44" instead of 48" or 32" instead of 36"). There were no 48" nor any 36" LED lamps in the store. There was almost no choice in any replacement LED lamps only. For that matter, there wasn't a lot of choices for Fluorescence bulbs in any size in stock either.

Tends to make one wonder if maybe replacement bulbs for anything may be a thing of the past. It may also indicate that maybe if your thinking that you want to have replacement bulbs available when what ever you now have, you better plan one storing them for yourself.

Government is and has been pushing LED's for quite some time. Most incandescents are being banned and fluorescents are already being targeted Hopefully the price will come down as they become more commonplace.

LINKY

I used to get more than 5 year life by buying the more expensive Cree LED lights, but the Cree LED incandescent replacements I bought 2 years ago are now either flickering or failing completely. I suspect electrolytic capacitors are failing rather than LEDs.

I worry that the all LED fixtures I see are electrically in series “daisy chain” wired with Chinese made LEDs and may go dark if just one diode fails out of a dozen or more?
None of the exterior of box advertising I have read has contained words such as “parallel wired leds to be single failure tolerant.

Maybe buy 2 extra units - one for quick change out
and a second unit to rob individual LEDs out of to repair the other units?

Not to worry I guess - government planners thought through any potential headaches years ago.......

20 years ... in your dreams maybe. My company has changed over to the new fixtures ... were told they would last 15,000 hrs .... in mulitple buildings and are replacing entire fixtures here and there yearly.

In the building where my office is they converted to direct wire 4ft replacement bulbs, because it was easier due to the building design/layout, over 5 years ago and haven't changed a single bulb as of yet, at the same time one hallway got replacement fixtures and 2 of the 4 have already been replaced ...

After research I spec’ed 4k for my new garage. When they showed up, they were 5K. Lamented sending them back, but didn’t. I’m happy with them.

This is what I use, they light up the room well, they are from a brand of replacement bulb I liked before.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07L44JCZ7/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

Out of about 15 I put up, one failed first year, it flashes. They sent a replacement when I called and I haven’t bothered putting it up. Room is so bright I don’t notice it. Says 50,000 hours. I dunno. They work though so far after two years. They don’t seem to mind that I plugged in more than 8. The one that flashes is in the middle of the string. I decided to unplug the ones by the garage door unless I’m working under there just in case that caused it. I seldom plug those in because things are bright enough. I think I have 10-12 in the main room and 4-6 in the other. Been very happy with this setup.

5000k is great to work with. I like 4000k in the house where I can get by with it in my areas. Wife likes the yellows in 2700-3000k. A counter guy told me the only complaints he’s had after an install were fixed by switching the people’s kitchen bulbs to 4000k. Said a handful of people picked stuff out and their yellow light made their counter look funny.

Definitely watch the lumens level. IMO, the claimed energy savings manufacturers tout are actually just selling you a low lumen bulb. I’m pretty annoyed by anything under about 750 lumens. Lots of bulbs are like 500- or less. I went to a fan company hq to compare models with a couple already in mind to buy that day. I decided not to after seeing how paltry the light was. I was told by the design team that they wanted some energy rating for the line and that was why. So bad I left without a fan that day.

Thanks for all the responses. It looks like most people are happy with the 5000k. I saw a Facebook ad for the style of lights I was looking at. The company was called Omni-Ray Lighting. I'm not one to buy something from a Facebook ad so I went to their website. Apparently they replace the Chinese driver with one of their own. They say LED fixtures can cause RF interference and their driver takes care of that.

My main issue now is finding an electrician to actually call me back. I've been ready for electric for weeks now and no one will call me back. Finally got someone on the phone Friday and they said they would contact me early this week, come out and have a look. We'll see. Not holding my breath. I don't know how companies can run a business like that. If you're busy, that's great, but call someone back and tell them that. Don't just ignore their calls.