Are LED Garage Lights Worth It?
A garage is usually used as a parking spot, workspace, storage, and a lot more, depending on your requirements. However, most garages suffer from a lack of natural sunlight or good lighting. Because of this, you’ve probably searched for various lighting solutions. The most prominent is LED lighting, as they’re 30% more efficient than other bulbs. But are LED garage lights worth it?
So, are LED garage lights worth it? Without a doubt, they are. LED lights are the most innovative lighting solution to date, and they can save you money on your electric bill, have a longer life expectancy than other bulbs, and they emit more lumens than other lighting solutions.
The above clearly states how good LED light bulbs genuinely are. After reading, I can imagine you’re eager to gain more knowledge of this valuable bulb and get some great product suggestions for your garage. Keep on scrolling to understand more about the best type of LED lighting and various other helpful-to-know queries.
What type of lighting is best for a garage?
As you can grasp from the above, LED lighting is the best solution for garage lighting. According to this study, LED lights can operate between -4°F(–20 °C) and 248°F(120 °C), making them an excellent garage light. (Keep in mind those are junction temperatures, not just the ambient room temperature.) As we’re aware, garages can fluctuate in temperatures daily, as they aren’t customarily insulated or heated well.
Because of this, many people use LED garage lights as they work well in a wide range of temperatures. Now you understand what the best lighting type is for a garage, what lights do we recommend you invest in? Here are our best solutions:
MPI
This MPI light we designed here at STKR concepts is like no other. It’s unique and doesn’t follow the same “traditional” light fixture as many available on the market. MPI stands for Multi-Point Illumination, and it allows its users to generate five points of light from just a single standard lighting fixture.
This helps illuminate an oversized garage without installing additional light fixtures. By doing this, you minimize the number of shadows a room can create. These immense features also come equipped with a motion sensor, security camera compatibility, and a unique cable management design.
The light is one of a kind, and it can produce 7,500 true lumens collectively from the five lighting sources. Considering the energy is only supplied from one fixture to the center hub, that’s pretty impressive. As well as this, the average life of the LED within the MPI is estimated to last 50,000 hours.
If you have a large garage and want to offer enough light to illuminate the entire room without any shadows, then without a doubt, you need to consider the MPI.
Trilight
Now, we understand not everybody has a large enough garage to accommodate five different lighting points. Before the MPI came along, we had developed another lighting fixture called the Trilight. In Fact, we are the original designers of this style garage light. The Trilight is innovative at its finest, and it was built with a solution in mind. Beware of cheap Chinese copies like the Tri-burst and others.
Here at STKR, we’ve already developed numerous award-winning lighting designs, and this is just another one that we’ve added to our portfolio.
The Trilight has a unique design, so you’re able to emit light 360-degrees. Included in the design comes three main features. These are the LED efficiency, built-in motion sensor, and the ability to screw into a standard light fixture. It’s essentially a super-bulb replacement with three adjustable light sources.
This light is excellent, as it comes with a boatload of great features and also has the power to produce 4000 lumens. From a 24-watt power consumption, means that the Trilight is extremely efficient. Just like all our lights from STKR, they are built to last. Because of this, you’ll receive 50,000 hours’ worth of life from your LED bulbs.
If you’re looking for a LED garage light, then the Trilight may be worth considering.
Trilight Shoplight
At STKR, we like making solutions for everybody. We understand that garage owners may not have suitable fixtures to install the above lights in some events. Because of this, we created the Trilight Shoplight.
This lighting solution is powered from a 120v plug rather than a lighting fixture. Because of this, it makes it portable, easy to implement, and it can quickly be moved to a more advantageous location. These features are superb, but included with this are 3,000 lumens and around 50,000 hours’ worth of light. This is superb, and it guarantees you won’t need to buy a new LED bulb for years to come.
The Trilight Shoplight is undoubtedly one of the best lighting solutions if you don’t have access to a physical light fixture to accommodate the above. Or if you are just looking to replace your old metal drop light that you’re tire of getting your fingers burnt on or sick of having to replace the bulb every time you drop it. Plus, this new style droplight/shoplight has many more lighting features and can withstand the abuse of a garage lighting situation.
Do LED lights raise electric bills?
Now you understand how good LED lights are for garages, and the best ones we produce, let’s dive further into the topic. The first question that many homeowners ask before investing in LED lighting is, “will it raise my electric bill?”.
Suppose you’re asking yourself a similar query, great. Let’s discuss this common question even further.
The electricity that is used to emit a light bulb is measured in kWh (or kilowatt-hours). Typically, a LED bulb uses an industry average of 126.5KWh, over its 15,000 hours of life expectancy. If we compare this to its popular competitor, the incandescent bulb, we can see a significant kWh difference. Although an incandescent bulb has a life span of around 1,000 hours, it’ll use up to 9000 kWh of electricity throughout its life.
From the above, you can clearly see that the LED uses a lot less electricity than the traditional incandescent bulb. It’s actually well-known that LED bulbs cut energy consumption by 90 percent compared to incandescent bulbs. Included with this exciting statistic, you’ll also find that ENERGY STAR-rated products last 25 times longer than incandescent lighting.
As we can see, LED lights can decrease your electricity bill if you compare them to incandescent types. To better understand the decrease of money you’ll spend on LED bulbs, look at it like this:
On average, each kWh worth of energy in the United States is around 13 cents per hour. If we consider this price, we’ll quickly discover that an LED bulb will cost $16.58 for its entire life expectancy of 15,000 hours. In contrast, an incandescent bulb would cost you $117 for only 1,000 hours of lighting.
Let’s be honest here, the above clearly shows evidence that LED lighting solutions are much cheaper than the incandescent kind. From knowing this, I’m sure you’re ready to invest in LED lighting for your garage. However, if you’re still not convinced that LED garage lighting is the right choice for you, I suggest you read the table below:
Do LED lights really save money?
From the above information, we can quickly determine that LED can save you money compared to the incandescent bulb. But how do they compare to other light sources? Although it’s hard to really pinpoint exactly how much LED lights can save you, let’s take a look at the percentage of money they’ll save compared to traditional incandescents, halogen incandescents, and CFLs
|
60W Traditional Incandescent |
43W Energy-Saving Incandescent |
15W CFL (60W Traditional) |
15W CFL (43W Halogen) |
12W LED (60W Traditional) |
12W LED (43W Halogen) |
|
|
Energy $ Saved (%) |
N/A |
-25% |
-75% |
-65% |
-75 to 80% |
-72% |
|
Annual Energy Cost |
$4.80 |
$3.50 |
$1.20 |
$1.20 |
$1.00 |
$1.00 |
|
Bulb Life |
1000 hours |
1000 to 3000 hours |
10,000 hours |
10,000 hours |
25,000 hours |
25,000 hours |
Source: Energy.gov
Note – The above data is measured from 2 hrs/day of usage at the cost of 11 cents per kWh.
The above information should be a clear indicator of how much LED lighting solutions can genuinely save you. AS you can see, either a 12W traditional or halogen bulb can save you between 72 to 80% on your annual energy costs. This is incredible, and if you’re someone that uses your garage light a lot, you’ll be able to reap the benefits even more.
How long do LED Garage Lights last?
As an industry-standard, an LED light will last around 15,000 to 25,000 hours if provided the perfect conditions and set-up. For instance, if you experience regular water leaks in your garage roof, you can expect the LEDs to become damaged quicker if they’re subject to moisture. Nonetheless, the bulbs themselves will last you a lifetime at 15,000 to 25,000 hours. To gain a better visualization, here are what the other popular bulbs life expectancy are:
This clearly indicates the power that LED garage lights truly acquire. Considering they have the longest life expectancy of any bulb, are normally cheaper, and can emit the most amount of light, it’s a no-brainer to invest in LED garage lighting.
How many lumens do I need to light my garage?
If you’re considering investing in a new lighting solution, I’m sure you want to know how many lumens you need to light up a garage. After all, you want the perfect amount of lighting to ensure your entire space is illuminated.
For those who don’t know much about lumens, lumens is the measurement of light emitted from a lighting source. If you want to understand more about lumens, I suggest you read this other post we created.
But, how many lumens do you need to light up your garage?
Well, this really depends on the layout, style, wall color, and obstructions as this will ultimately determine how many light fixtures you need. However, it’s recommended to use around 130 to 150 lumens per square foot of an area as a very generalized rule of thumb. Although this is great information, if you have corners or obstacles in your garage, you’ll need multiple lighting fixtures rather than a set number of lumens.
If you have multiple compartments or obstructions dotted around your garage, you should consider investing in a lighting solution like the MPI that we discussed above. Instead of having just one outlet of light, you’re able to connect five from a single light fixture. From this, you can cover all areas of your garage, which will ensure you have suitable lighting no matter where you’re situated. This will undoubtedly turn it into your dream-like garage.
Do LED garage lights get hot?
A concern that a lot of people have is how hot a light can get. This is understandable because heat can cause fires in extreme circumstances. If you’re someone that likes to take caution when it comes to things like this, then LED lighting may be your best friend.
The University of Pennsylvania concludes that 80 percent of electrical energy is converted into light when using an LED bulb, meaning only 20% of energy is wasted through heat. Of course, this means they’re dominantly safer than bulbs like incandescent and CFLs. Let me explain why.
According to Energy.gov, incandescent bulbs release around 90% of their total energy as heat rather than light. This means that all the electricity you pump into an incandescent bulb, only 10% is towards light, and the other 90% is completely wasted on heat, resulting in you paying electricity for more heat rather than light.
Next to incandescent bulbs is CFLs and these waste around 80% of energy in heat instead of light. It goes without saying these findings are somewhat surprising, but it goes to show what bulbs waste energy on heat.
Considering the above and the other findings of LED bulbs compared to others, it’s evident that this bulb is the king of all bulbs. Its price, the lumens, lifespan, energy consumption, everything, is just much better than any other bulb that exists.
Conclusion
After reading the above, you should be able to clarify whether or not LED garage lighting is worth it. It goes without saying that they are. The price for the bulbs, the energy consumption, and various other factors are much better than other bulbs like incandescent and CFLs.
So, now you understand the sheer worth that LED lights have, will you be upgrading?