

#1200 lumen scale windows#
Garages with dark walls or shaded light fixtures will need to increase the number of lumens to compensate. By contrast, garages with windows will have enough ambient lighting so you won’t need as many light fixtures. Keep in mind that these are only general guidelines. That sounds like a lot, but in reality, it’s about what you get from one four-foot LED light fixture.
#1200 lumen scale install#
Since you should install 300 lumens per square foot for workshop areas, this comes out to 4,500 lumens to adequately light your workshop table area. If your workshop table is 6 feet by 2.5 feet, this means that the square footage of your table is 6 x 2.5 or 15 square feet. To calculate how many lumens you need, you need to figure out the area of your workshop area. The Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) recommends having 300 lumens per square foot in a workshop area. People who use their garage as their main workshop or detailing their cars need brighter lighting (higher lumens) than someone who only parks their vehicle. How Do You Calculate Lumens for a Workbench? This worked out to be around 48,000 lumens for my two-car garage.įor more on my garage lighting installation, click to read this article. In my case, I wanted my garage lighting to be as bright as possible, so I went with a minimum of 100 lumens per square foot. The number of lumens you need may increase based on how you use your garage. Ft = 20,000 lumensĪ one-car garage needs a minimum of 13,200 lumens, and a two-car garage requires a minimum of 20,000 lumens. Now that you have those two numbers, we multiply them to get the total number of lumens you need for your garage. Similarly, the average two-car garage is around 20′ x 20′, although there’s slightly more variability in size. We’ll use this to determine how much lighting you need in your garage.Ī standard one-car garage is 12′ x 22′, which gives it 264 sq. The other input we need is the square footage of your garage. We’re going to assume your garage needs a minimum of the same amount of light. They recommend 50 lumens per square foot for an automotive showroom or service area. They’re written for commercial buildings, but they offer some valuable insights, which we’ll use here. The Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) recommended guidelines for lighting based on how the space is used. Now let’s talk about how we get to the numbers I listed initially.
#1200 lumen scale how to#
How to Calculate Lumens for Garage Lighting Thankfully, there’s a simple calculation we can do to figure it out for your specific garage.ĭon’t worry. How many lumens you need for your garage depends on what you’re planning on doing in your garage, so there’s no “one light fits all” solution. Lumens are the raw quantity of light produced by an object, not the amount of power that the light bulb uses. These days, LED lights are rated in Lumens. However, the manufacturers listed them in terms of watts of power used, confusing consumers. Usually, higher wattage means a brighter bulb, but not always.ĬFL light bulbs, the twisty fluorescent light bulbs, produced a comparable level of light at a fraction of the energy consumption of our old incandescent bulbs. 60W, 100W, etc., but watts measure the amount of energy a light bulb uses and not how much light it gives off. We’re used to seeing light bulbs in terms of watts. So how do you figure out how many lumens you need to light a garage properly?įirst, let’s talk about what a lumen is and how it compares to watts. The Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) guidelines recommend a minimum of 50 lumens per square foot of space. The average one-car garage needs a minimum of 13,200 lumens, while a two-car garage requires a minimum of 20,000 lumens. The number of lumens emitted by your lights determines the general brightness of the lighting in the garage.
