Lighting for Garage Shop

The Harbor Freight shop light as Lighting for a Garage Shop! When upgrading my garage shop lighting, I ran into many options ranging from about $15 on eBay and Walmart to north of $50 at places like Home Depot and Lowe’s. While cost was a huge deciding factor in purchasing the Harbor Freight shop lights, the combination of brightness, light frequency, and LED, technology was all in play.

For years fluorescent lights were the traditional choice for garage shop spaces and factories. However, many people don’t know that fluorescent shop lights don’t work in temperatures below 50 degrees and are generally not suited for cold climates. On the other hand, LED Lighting used in garage woodworking shops thrives in cold weather since they do not require heat to turn on. Many LED shop lights can operate in temperatures ranging from -30°C to 60°C (-22°F to 140°F). That is why the Harbor Freight Shop Lights are the preferred solution for cold garage shops and even outdoor environments.

Choosing the right lighting for your garage shop can be a little tricky! There are many claims and lots of choices. However, there are some basic guidelines to follow. First and the most important is “LUMENS”; this is the SI derived unit of luminous flux, a measure of the total quantity of visible light emitted by a source per unit of time. The second is temperature, and I don’t mean heat temperature but relatively light temperature. This spec usually is expressed in “Kelvin,” and it refers to the SI base unit of thermodynamic temperature, equal in magnitude to the degree Celsius. The Kelvin rating is used to measure the color temperature of a particular light bulb, LED, and other light-emitting devices.

The ideal light temperature for a garage woodworking shop is between 4500 and 5500 Kelvin. Below that, and you end up with a yellowish light. Go above that, and you end up with a bluish light! If you are not doing any color matching or detail painting, going as high as 6000 Kelvin is ok. I say this because shop lighting outside the 4000 to 5500 range can alter the way colors look indoors! Once you take your project outdoors, the color may not match or look much different from inside. Also, know that a shop light with a light temperature above 6000 can be fatiguing on the eyes, especially if you wear glasses or contacts.

As I said before, the reason for choosing the Harbor Freight Shop Light was because it checked many of the boxes of what I was looking for, including cost, light temperature, and LED technology. After applying the Harbor Freight Braun shop light coupon, the price for the four units I purchased was under $60.00, and I consider that a bargain, especially when I didn’t have to wait three weeks for similarly priced units on eBay coming from China.

With that said, the Harbor Freight 5000 lumen shop light is not perfect! At 4000K, it comes in at the lower part of the spectrum; however, it kind of makes up for it with a rating of 5000-lumen. Something else to consider is the amount of heat that it radiates! The Harbor Freight 4 ft. led shop light is not one you want to install close to you! As a matter of fact, I went through all the trouble of making custom mounting brackets because of the heat they generate! And while talking about mounting brackets, I think you should watch the entire video since I use this mounting bracket for many other applications. As always, I hope you were able to take something away from this video and look forward to answering your comments and having you as a subscriber at the Cuban Redneck DIY Channel.