educate me on LED shop lighting

so in the process of planning the next steps of my shop renovation: the woodshop side.

to do this, im building a workbench with drawers, and above it a 2 foot deep cabinet that's 8 foot long and 60 inches high.

anyway, this side of the shop already has lighting issues due to ductwork/plumbing/etc being in the way of hanging ceiling lights at the proper places for my workstations.

I remember reading a thread on here about the ribbon LED lights from EBAY for cheap, and using them. at least I thing it was on here....

anyway, would it be feasible to line the undersides of all my cabinets with 3 rows of led lights to light my workbench/lathe/bandsaw area? what lights (color, etc) would I need? any additional parts? or should I just screw some 4 foot fluorescents under there and deal the their intrusion into my workspace?

My new answer to all lighting is superbrightleds.com. I cannot attest to them, but they've got some pretty sweet E36 M3 that I want. Check them out.

I can say that some 5000k+ tubes will be way more light than LEDs. Just be sure the fluorescent bulbs you get are at least 5000k in color. A 5500k light will look way brighter than a 2500k (normal cheap bulb) at the same power rating.

5400K is daylight. It is the colour tempeture of the sun at noon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d46gG4NNr4

Dave has quite a few videos on LED lab lighting. He has many of the issues garage lighting encounter.

Incandescent and CFL bulbs mostly come from large, reputable manufacturers. But LED bulbs are driven by microchips - and there seem be to be hundreds of micro brands all selling competing bulb designs made in Asia, and no real consensus on what's worth buying. I picked up a pair of LED bulbs from Ikea for $15 each. Neither lasted more than a week, so I'm letting some of you early adopters find the good stuff.

We're still in the process of sorting out what's what when it comes to using LED's for general purpose lighting. The technology is changing almost daily. I had a vendor come in a couple of weeks ago with some LED lights that were incredible.

I literally just went through the process of specifying a LED fixture for lighting a mechanical space (which is kinda like a garage). Found some interesting stuff and decided on these:

http://www.lithonia.com/commercial/zl.html#.Up1ktOLoeeY

Granted... I have no idea how much they cost right now... and that probably won't matter to the client as the reduced maintenance costs (no regular bulb changing) often outweigh the higher purchase costs compared to fluorescent fixtures. Especially in the particular application where these are going (very difficult to get to).

Like nderwater said, unless you're willing to spend the coin buying commercial grade fixtures from a reputable manufacturer, it's probably best to sit and wait for a bit longer on the consumer side.

Im going through similar issues right now. I just built 2 benches with tire racks over them and I really need some lights. While I am at it, I want to add some for the shelf with all my nuts and bolts. There are tons of undercabinet lighting options but I have a budget that keeps leading me back to just mounting a fluorescent fixture. I have enough room I could mount a couple regular bulb sockets but I would rather not have something sticking down that much.

I just bought a strip of LED 12volt lights from amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B005EHHLD8/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new

I also did the Amazon generic thing for our kitchen. It was a kit with 3 strips and a dimmer switch, around $60 I think. I can't find it on there right now. Anyhow, we are happy with the results"

I've got some LED floodlights installed in recessed fixtures and HOLY CRAP do they pump out light. They were around $20 a pop, but IMO totally worth it. I'm looking at recessed cans in the garage now too

I've got recessed LED lights in my garage for general lighting and track LEDs over my work bench. Home depot products. No failures, great light and awesome watt/lumen ratio. Very happy.

I recently bought several "outdoor" rated LED bulbs for my outside coach lamps. I paid about $15 each from Costco. They lasted about five days before elements started going out. Thank God I shopped Costco. They took them back & 100% refunded me.

Like many other casual customers, I'll wait for the quality of the consumer targeted offerings to improve.

I just bought one of these to try out in the garage as I've been adding fixtures, though the rest so far have been 2 and 4 tube t8s.

LED Wrap Light

I really like the instant on (if you wait a beat) nature of this LED light, but it's spendy-- really spendy if it doesn't last, as it looks like there's really nothing replacable if it doesn't last.