GARAGE LIGHTING SYSTEMS
PROFESSIONAL LIGHTING SOLUTIONS BY VAULT

Lighting is one of the most important elements of a garage, whether it is a workshop, a professional garage or an automotive showroom. Perfect lighting conditions are indispensable in service areas. Ever try waxing a car in a poorly lit room? Or how about finding a dropped fastener? Automobile dealers desire that their cars look the same inside of the showroom as they would out in daylight. In a showroom, it is vital to reproduce color accuracy correctly, so silver does not look like light blue or vice versa.

The requirements for a home garage are not much different from a professional workshop or showroom, yet, it’s often an element that is overlooked as evidenced by the complete lack of fixtures that have been designed for the unique requirements of this space.

Lighting in most residential garages is woefully inadequate, consisting of a few incandescent bulbs or fluorescent cans hanging from the ceiling. Given that most garages typically lack windows (and for good reason too because direct sunlight can fade paint and fabrics), the situation is compounded by the lack of a natural light source. A poorly lit room can be an unpleasant place for work or pleasure, particularly if there is no natural light or if there are fixtures with ballasts that “hum” noisily.

Designing your garage to be well lit is crucial will transform the feel and functionality of your garage. Like other rooms in the home, the garage should be illuminated in three layers of light: general (main) lighting, task lighting and accent lighting. Each plays an important role in bathing the garage in three to five sources of overlapping light to eliminate shadows and dark corners.

Let’s go over each layer:

Your general lighting should turn on immediately and provide the majority of the light within your garage.

Ceiling heights will be a factor in choosing the main ambient light source for your.

TASK LIGHTING
Describes the kind of lighting that is designed to meet the needs of the tasks you want to accomplish. Fixtures should be placed within close proximity to your task, such as lighting a workbench area or lights tucked under your wall cabinets. Here, good contrast rendition, appropriate luminance levels, harmonious brightness distribution and elimination of glare are the relevant criteria.

ACCENT LIGHTING
This form of lighting has not been promoted for use in a garage, although it is wonderful to highlight artwork or any other interesting features. Accent lighting aimed toward the walls and ceilings can make the room appear brighter than if light is directed only to the floor.

Ranges from concentrated accent lighting, such as spotlighting a vehicle or on a piece of artwork on a wall through to wide-area background lighting such as cove lighting that shows off the architectural features of a ceiling.

AMBIENT LIGHTING
This is the primary light source you will use day-in and day-out. The task of general lighting is fairly basic; it is designed to produce a sufficient and uniform brightness and to create a safely lit environment. How many times has someone pulled their car into a garage only to run into something they didn’t see? It happens all the time.