Lighting Tips For Your Basement Workshop

Robert Robillard

11 years ago

Workshop Lighting:

Proper lighting in your workshop is as important as any tool in your toolbox. Whether its to see what your doing, illuminate mill marks on wood surface or for photographing of your work having adequate and proper lighting is important! The challenges are that many of us have sub-terran workshops. the article below will outline a few workshop lighting tips for your basement workshop.

Lighting Location:

Design your workshop so you have light at every machine and work space. Make sure you have ample lighting positioned so that shadows do not occur and compromise productivity or safety.

If I were building a shop from scratch I would incorporate plenty of windows, skylights and large sliding doors or sliding walls to maximize natural light. Unfortunately many of us do not have that luxury.

To accomplish this, numerous types of lighting can be employed in several ways:

General and Overhead Lighting:

Most of the light in the workshop should come from overhead lighting. I’m a fan of fluorescent bulbs over incandescent bulbs but which ever you choose, the fixtures should be spread out to provide consistent overall lighting throughout the entire shop with out major shadows or dark spots.

Fluorescent lighting is the least expensive way to light a workshop.

These fixtures can be installed with screws, and is no more difficult than installing a regular light fixture. The lights are bright and use very little electricity and are easily replaced.

Spot Lighting:

In some spaces, in addition to the overall lighting, it may be advantageous to place recessed flood or spot lights directly over some of your tools and workbenches.

I have two 500 watt halogens on an adjustable, directional swivel and in two key locations of my shop to flood light over my table saw and assembly table in my shop. I also added white reflective boards on the ceiling and can rotate these lights to bounce [diffuse] light off the white board for photographing purposes.

Tool or Task Lights:

Many tools now come with on-tool lighting. My drill press is one of them. You can purchase after market lighting with heavy duty magnets or just install a simple clamp light. These task lights are a great supplement to your overhead lighting and should not be a replacement for poor shop lighting.

If you have cabinets over a workbench then under cabinet lighting is a perfect solution and location for task lighting the bench.

Optimizing the Lighting in your Workshop:

A real simple and cost effective way to optimize lighting in your shop is to paint the ceiling, floor and walls white.

The color of the walls and the ceiling in a workshop can make a huge difference. the reflection of light off the white color makes the room brighter.

While not practical for many shop floor it does work. I choose a different route in my shop and added a combination of general, spot and task lighting to find the right balance of light.

Stay bright!

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