modern living room led lighting

marc - so today i want totalk about shop lighting and before i show you whati installed here in the new shop let's take atrip down memory lane, to a simpler time, 2012.when i built the dream shop. i did my research on lighting at the time and it seemed pretty clear tome that t8 fluorescent bulbs were the way to go. they had phased out the t12's,t8's were smaller, brighter, more efficient and it justseemed like a logical solution.

now led was around at the timebut the problem was it was cost prohibitive andthere really wasn't a lot in the way of options for that. so t8 was really the only way to go. since then, about five yearslater, we now have tons of led choices. the market has taken off,there's a lot of options, and the cost has really come down. now here in the shop herein denver we actually are

working with american greenlights to outfit all the led's in the shop and it is niceand bright and beautiful and looks good on video and i have two differenttypes of fixtures. and i'll show those toyou later but for now, i want to talk a littlebit about some terminology. because in order to be aninformed shopper you need to know some basic terms. and i'll tell you this lightingstuff, you could really

geek out on it, and it iscertainly a science that you need to master if you're goingto get into the business. but if you're just buyingshop lights, you just need to know a few terms tounderstand what you're buying. so the type of light we'retalking about today is led. that stands for light emitting diode. now we're not going to getinto the science behind it but just understand that it'sbrighter, it's more efficient, so it costs less to run,and it produces less heat.

now when you look at lightsyou're going to see a bunch of different numbers on the packaging and the next three termsdeal with what those numbers actually mean. one important one is lumens. lumens is total light output and that's just how they measure it. so if you have a lot oflumens, it's going to be really really bright,and if the number is low

it's not going to be as bright. you also see references inliterature to foot candles, we're not going to really get into that. it's related to lumens but most commercial productsi've seen reference lumens and that's where we're goingto keep our discussion today. the next number you might see is cri. that stands for color rendering index. now when it comes to artificiallight, some are better at

showing you what the colorsactually look like than others. what we're comparing this to is daylight. natural sunlight is a 100 on the index. basically it is showing youvivid colors and you can see the colors accurately for what they are. with artificial light, someof them aren't very good so if the number is low itmeans that you're not really going to see red as truered or blue as true blue. but if it's a high criin the 90's maybe 90-05

that actually means thecolors are going to be bright and vivid and very close to what natural daylight would produce. next up is color temperature. you'll see this as anumber with a k at the end, it stands for kelvin. that's just the scalethat it's measured in. if you go 5,000 kelvin orhigher you tend to get into your blues and your whites.

it looks like a cooler color. if you go below 5,000 the2 or 3,000's that's warmer and you're going to seemore yellows and reds. now this matters becausethe way the light reflects onto surfaces and things inthe shop it can actually give you an unrealistic view ofwhat the color of that thing actually is. now as someone who does videothis is extremely important to me. it may not be asimportant to you, but you still

want a color that kind ofmakes sense for the space. when it comes to these colorsi think it's interesting if you look inside a house,most people can't exactly tell you what the rightcolor is for temperature, but they will tell you thewrong color temperature. so if you go into a livingroom space and someone has daylight spectrum 6,000k bulbs in there, it's not comfortable, it's weird. it would feel odd tosit in the living room

that's brightly lit with 6,000k. but if you go into alaundry room let's say, or a work area and it's litwith 3,000k light bulbs, a very warm light. it's going to feel weird in there, it's going to look dim, it's not going to bea bright active space. so for a workshop, in myopinion, i think 5,000k is a pretty good number.

i find that pretty usefulwith video if i get a little natural light comingin through the windows combing with the artificiallight it doesn't really throw things off too much. and natural light, by the way, is 6500k. so you would think maybei should just go 6500, well that's a little hard on the eyes. if you've ever been in abuilding that uses 6500k lights it's just so blue and so bright

that i just find it difficult. so most people are going to beuncomfortable in that space. so for me i max out at about 5,000k. now jim over at american greenlights did an amazing job sort of looking at my shopspace and helping me determine what the best layout is andwhat kind of lights i would need to properly light this space. not just for woodworkingbut for video work. so let me show you the details.

jim requested two things from me, my shop dimensions as wellas my proposed tool layout. it's a little earlier tofully commit to tool locations but i figured, hey let's run with it. jim recreated my layout using his software and place a series of 24watt and 60 watt fixtures throughout the shop, with light being focused overeach major tool or work area. he think generated a heatmap showing the areas

where light would be brightest. as you can see the tool areasare yellow, orange and red meaning you'll be brightly lit. the areas between the toolsare a lot less important but since most of the shop isgreen that means there will be a fair amount of lightconsistently cast around the shop to help limit shadows whichreally helps with my video work. now let's look at the lights themselves. now here's a 24 watt fixtureand we kind of saved this

to last because it's gota nice dent in there, unfortunately but you can seei've got a nice strip of led's here and the driver is encased in it's own little compartment and ofcourse the led's mount on top like this. alright so all you need to dois connect this to standard 120 volt power. you've got your hot, yourneutral and your ground. pretty straightforward.

and this guy produces about2500 lumens and the color rendering index is 92 to95 so really good quality. the 60 watt fixture isa little bit larger. we've got five led stripshere, two drivers in the case and this guy puts out 6,000 lumens. now keep in mind that myshop is half woodworking shop but also half video studio. so the things i'm concerned about and the amount of attention i've paid to lighting

might be a little bit morethan you're prepared to do. but at least if youknow some of these terms when you go and shop for lights, you can be more informed andmake sure you're getting a quality product because guess what? there's a lot of stuffcoming in from overseas and it's very hard to verifythe quality of those things. so at least knowing theterminology you can make an informed buying decision.

of course, check outamerican green lights. they make a fantastic productand in addition to this video we actually have a little articlethat my buddy vic wrote up telling you a little bit aboutthe different types of led lights that are out there, withsome recommendations as well that you might want toincorporate into your shop. because sometimes brand newled's are not necessarily the way to go. there are retrofit kits andreplacements for t8 bulbs

that are led which is pretty cool. alright, so be sure to checkthat out on the website. thanks for watching everybody.

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