With a little planning, it’s easy to achieve the illuminated garage you want
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Garages are useful spaces for parking your car in a sheltered place. It can also double as a safe spot to work on your vehicle and a place to secure and organize outdoor and household tools.
Many garages tend to be cold, dim spaces that are almost as creepy as unfinished basements. If your garage falls in this category, here are some simple tips to upgrade the lighting to enhance this space’s functionality and aesthetics.
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If you’re not sure where to begin, The Home Depot has a few general guidelines that will help you get started on the right footing. First, install one 8-foot lighting fixture per vehicle space in your garage. These fixtures should use 4-foot-long bulbs that are easy to install and replace when need be.
If you live in a cold climate, avoid using fixtures with electromagnetic ballasts. Instead, use ones that have electronic ballasts. Bob Vila recommends using T5 or T8 bulbs that will work even the coldest of garage temperatures.
Diversify the lighting sources
It’s important to diversify the types of lighting you use in the garage, as Bob Vila and Manasa Reddigari confirm. Besides overhead lighting, you’ll also want to incorporate task, ambient, and accent lighting.
Task lighting
This lighting type delivers focused illumination for small spaces like when you’re working on your car. It can take the form of stand-alone strip light fixtures, or shop lights that hang from the ceiling via a suspension chain. You can also invest in under-cabinet light fixtures and portable clamp-on lights.
Ambient lighting
It provides a soft glow with just enough visibility so you can navigate your garage without bumping into things. Two examples of this are illuminated garage door openers and wraparound or flush-mount lights on the ceiling.
Accent lighting
This lighting type is about half as intense as task and ambient lighting. Accent lighting fixtures can take the form of wall-mounted sconces or ceiling-mounted pendant lights. It can be used to highlight parts of the garage you want to focus on, whether it’s a work table or a wall-mounted collection of vintage license plates.
Check out this article for more tips on improving your garage’s lighting. And make sure to review these strategies for de-cluttering and cleaning your garage.
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Whitney Russell is a current resident of Dayton, though her spirit can be found beach-bumming in Puerto Rico (the land of her half-Puerto Rican heritage). When not adventuring through the exciting world of car news, she can be found hiking with her husband and their two dogs, motorcycling, visiting nephews and nieces, discovering new memes, thrifting, decorating, crafting, woodburning, researching random things, and escaping into a great movie. See more articles by Whitney.
