The Best Lighting for a Garage Gym (3 Lights Tested!)
The lighting in most garages is really not meant for much more than making sure you don’t trip over your car on the way out to work in the morning. But, what if you’re working out in your garage and you want a little extra light?
What’s the Best Lighting for a Garage Gym?
The best lighting options are opening your garage doors to let in natural light and upgrading the current bulbs in your garage. Both choices provide a huge increase in the amount of light for your garage gym and don’t require complicated installations.
Keep reading to learn more about why opening your garage doors is boss, the issues you want to avoid when thinking about lighting solutions and the best lighting fixture that I found after trying a couple of highly rated Amazon choices.
Before we get into the ideas, let’s address a couple of issues you may run into when trying to figure out how to light up your garage.
Things to Avoid When Selecting Lighting For a Garage Gym
You’re Not an Electrician
Now, if you are an electrician, then obviously disregard – but for most of us, the idea of running wire and hooking up electricity is the thought of nightmares. So nowhere in this article am I going to suggest you do either of those things. All the solutions I’m going to suggest are going to need, at most, a good pair of scissors to open a box.
Lights That Need Plugged In
I have two outlets total in my two-car garage. One of those outlets is located on my wife’s “side” of the garage (you know, the side where a car actually sits). The other is in a closet of sorts that sits in the back of my garage. I have to run an extension cord down the side of my garage to hook up my TV, a phone charger, and depending on the time of year, either a fan or a space heater.
If this sounds familiar then just plugging in a light may not be as easy as it sounds. I’m going to be taking this into consideration too.
This is one of the reasons why I would advise against getting a long, overhead light like you might see in a garage or work shed. First, you’re going to have to install the light into your ceiling. Is that really that hard? No, but most likely not necessary for what we need.
Secondly, most of those overhead lights require you to plug them in. Some are battery-operated, but those are much harder to find than you would think. Now you have another cord to run and another thing that needs to be plugged in.
Zero Cost Garage Gym Lighting
Open the Doors!
Occam’s Razor is a principle that basically says, “the simplest explanation is probably the right one.” The simplest, easiest (and cheapest) way to get light into your garage gym – open the garage doors.
Before you hit me with the ‘thank you Captain Obvious’, I know of many people who don’t like to workout with their doors open. They like the privacy the doors provide and don’t like the idea of their neighbors watching them work out.
If that sounds like you then I highly encourage you to get over this mental obstacle. Not only is opening the doors going to let in that natural light that will brighten up your garage, but the fresh air will do wonders for your mental psyche. Honestly, the sense of open air that comes with lifting in your garage is the most underrated aspect of the whole experience in my opinion.
Even for those of us who love hitting the ‘open door’ button before we get started warming up, there will come a time when opening the doors is no longer going to be a great idea. Winter.
You may not even need winter weather to arrive before you start looking at upgrading your garage gym lighting. The genesis of this entire article is because I got to the point where I just wanted a brighter space to work out in. The Ultralast 13W/120V/60Hz Bulb and open garage doors just wasn’t enough anymore.
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Best Lighting for a Garage Gym
Once I decided I needed more light, I wanted to start with what I felt was the simplest possible solution first.
Upgrade the light bulbs.
I got 3 different lighting options to test out and I’m going to give you my impressions and review of all 3 and most importantly tell you what option I ended up sticking with for my garage gym.
You may wonder how I decided on these three options. Fair question.
To be honest, I went to Amazon and found three of the most popular lighting choices for garages. These 3 bulbs had a combined roughly 35,000 reviews on Amazon with an average rating of 4.8.
| Best Garage Gym Lighting | ||
| Bulb | My Cost | Check Latest Price on Amazon |
| Great Eagle 100W | 18.99 / 6 pack | Check Amazon for Latest Price |
| Ghustar 2 Pack | 25.49 / 2 | Check Amazon for Latest Price |
| Tanbaby | 21.99 | Check Amazon for Latest Price |
Great Eagle 100W Equivalent LED Light Bulb
The first solution was the most simple. Replace my 60w equivalent energy-efficient bulb with a 100w equivalent.
This bulb is still an energy-efficient bulb, using 87% less energy than a standard incandescent bulb. This bulb was by far the cheapest option of the three. I got a 6-pack of the bulbs for $19 for an average price of just over $3 a bulb.
This is the first bulb I tried out. Not that any of them were hard to install (you can literally take each one out of the box and just screw it in), but this is the most friendly of the three simply because it’s just a regular light bulb.
As you can see from the pic above, the 100W Great Eagle Bulb really lit up the room. If I would have just purchased this bulb (you know, like a normal person would probably do) I would have been more than happy with the purchase. This is especially true if I put another one of these in the other garage bay.
Add to this that these pictures are taken late in the evening with the doors down. Add in some daylight from open garage doors and I believe most people would be more than happy with the amount of light this bulb generated.
Ghustar 2-Pack Garage Lights 60W LED Garage Lighting
The next two lighting fixtures I got were two of the three panel LED lights. These Ghustar lights look much fancier than the 100W bulbs, but they still have the convenience of just screwing directly into a regular light socket. No special installation or extra pieces to buy to get it to work in your garage.
Pricing wise, these were middle of the pack. I got a two pack (look closely when looking at these styles of lights on Amazon. The differences in how many lights you actually get can sometimes get lost in all the details) on sale for about $25 which works out to about $12.50 per bulb.
Performance wise the Ghustar light will absolutely light the crap out of a garage.
The crazy part is the Ghustar comes in a two pack so theoretically I could put another one of these in the other bay. However, there’s no chance I’d do that because it’s completely unnecessary.
The value, though, in having a two-pack is that you would immediately have a backup ready to go when the day comes when it’s time to replace it.
Garage Light Tanbaby LED Garage Light
This light made by Tanbaby is a 3 panel light very similar to the Ghustar. I would normally run in the other direction from a product that appears to just be spamming the keyword ‘garage light’ in their title. The fact that ‘garage light’ appears in their title 7 times is the ultimate in sketchiness, but I figure over 12,000 5-star ratings have to count for something.
This was also the most expensive of the three lights that I tried. It was $22 for a single light.
The Tanbaby, like the Ghustar, completely lit up the room.
I honestly couldn’t really tell much of a difference at all between the two lights. Performance wise they’re virtually a tie. With that in mind, the best light comes down to price and longevity.
Honestly, longevity I (hopefully) won’t have an answer to for quite a while. So it really comes down to price.
My Recommendation for Best Lighting for a Garage Gym
I gotta be honest, I’m a little torn on my recommendation. I really think most people would be more than satisfied with the amount of light that the 100W Great Eagle Energy Efficient Bulbs bring to the table.
Being able to get a six-pack for less than $20 definitely makes them the most cost-efficient option out of the three. You’ll then have either plenty of backups or extra bulbs to use elsewhere in your house.
However, if you really want to light up your garage gym, you can’t go wrong with either the Tanbaby or Ghustar lights. The fact that you can get two for close to the price of one gives Ghustar the advantage between the two for me.
Final Thoughts
Any of these three options will do a really good job if you’re looking to improve your garage gym lighting.
Hopefully, this article has helped you with your decision-making process on which of the three lighting options would be the best fit for your garage gym.
Stay Strong!
