Four Tubes. Photo by Jeremy Brooks.
“You know, I’ve seen operating rooms dirtier than your garage,” a former co-worker once said to me. Blame it on my obsessive German nature, but when I’m crawling around on hands and knees looking for that dropped nut, bolt or washer, I prefer to know I won’t be digging through spider webs, decades of dust and last fall’s leaves to find it. When it comes to having a serviceable garage work space, though, there’s one area where I’ve almost always fallen short: lighting.
Sure, I’ve owned garages with ample overhead fluorescents and painted ceilings, but the lights always seem to get shadowed by the garage door, or by a car’s hood or trunk. Working with a drop light helps (especially the new multi-tube fluorescent type), but anyone who’s ever rolled around a garage floor on a creeper knows this unavoidable truth: No matter how you position the extension cord, it WILL get tangled up in the wheel of your creeper, and probably at the exact time your phone rings, you drop a torch-heated nut on your chest or you need a tool that’s just out of reach.
Rechargeable LED lights come in handy, but in my experience they’re never charged when you really need them, they’re not quite bright enough and the battery never seems to last for as long as you need the lighting. LED headlamps are great for some tasks, since they put a concentrated beam of light where you need it, but they’re of little use for tasks like applying or wiping off car wax in shadow. As an aside, they belong in everyone’s glove box or center console, since they make changing a flat tire after dark a whole lot more manageable.
I suppose it’s safe to say that there’s no single solution for all of one’s garage lighting needs, but I’m sure others have found workable solutions, or even tips for handling specific tasks. My garage is in winter mode now, with three tons of pellets taking up a considerable amount of floorspace, but come spring I’m determined to make it a more workable, and hence better lit, space. What lighting setup (and layout) do you recommend, and what tricks do you use to shed light on the job at hand?
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