How to Best Light A Garage Home Gym?

March 16, 2021 jake ovenden 0 Comment

Since 2020 and the explosion of Covid-19 and the multiple lockdowns has affected the business and opening of commercial gyms. Every lockdown and changes of rules ha s led to people finding solitude in their own gyms. The explosion of garage and home gyms and workouts has led to an increased demand in trying to replicate the commercial gym environment. From the equipment to the mirrors to the lighting. Although we can’t provide you with the equipment or mirrors, we can give you the gym lighting secrets in order to get the best look in your home gym. We’ll outline the type of lighting you need to peak performance and the lighting layout and colors you need to the same selfie like in your favorite commercial gym.

Why is Gym Lighting so Important?

For some people, especially in commercial gyms, a lot of people have swapped or changed memberships based on the lighting. If you don’t like what you see in the gym you’re not going to keep going. So, what you need is lighting that is practical, comfortable and helps your confidence too. Allowing you to execute every exercise properly while improving week on week! So, let’s see the main reasons why good gym lighting is important:

See what you’re doing

This at first sounds obvious, but I’ve actually been to a few gyms myself where it was very dark and you really could not see everything clear enough. You want bright overhead clear lighting that’s going to make you feel awake and ready to go!

Checking your form

When performing any type of resistance training, especially weights, form is one of the most important aspects. To check your form, you’re going to need a big clear mirror and some clear lighting. Light your weights area correctly, check your form and you will grow!

Check your progress

If you’re on a long-term weight loss programmed, bulking through winter or cutting for summer or some type of shower photoshoot. You’re going to need consistent clear lighting. Especially if you’re working with a coach, each week checking in on your progress, taking images. Most weight loss programmers are minimum 12 weeks, so you’re going to need a long-term consistent light in order to store clear well-lit images to track your progress. Once the smaller details are in place, losing weight and developing becomes easy!

Improve your body image

Although health and fitness and doing weights or cardio is first and foremost promoting your health. When you look better you feel better and work harder in most cases. If you’re going back into the gym and every time a little bit happier with how you look and taken 1 or more positives from that workout, you’re going to go back for more. So set up a mirror and specific lighting in an area where you would like to check yourself and promote a better self-image. If you’re not too keen on having totally unrealistic lighting or mirrors in your gym. Just have one area with slightly more photography-based lighting. Natural lighting outside is not always the best or most honest for an image either, it has been known to wash people out. So, create a mix of task overhead lighting that makes you awake and ready to get stuck in and maybe a smaller corner or area that boosts your confidence and keeps you going in! to train!

What Steps Do You Need to Take?

Map out the dimensions of the room and this will tell you how many lights you need to install and how far apart they can be. Maybe save buying the lights for after the measurements are taken. Recent studies have shown that the brighter the lights, the better the workout. You need to be awake and aware, in order to perform your best.

How Many Lumens Do You Need?

Task lighting for general places or large open spaces is listed at around 300-400 lu. For a gym this is where you are specifically carrying out performance related tasks, so it may be a good idea to push to the upper range of lumens per square ft. To get 400 lumens per square foot, you just need to measure the garage and x by 400lumens.

Calculation:

For a normal garage workout area let’s say is 5x5=25m2.
25m2x400lm=10,000 lumens

Getting 10,000 lumens of daylight bright beam to workout under for an indoor garage is actually pretty achievable, using LED overhead lights. Although it is possible to get a single large powerful light that can provide this amount of light, it may be beneficial arrange your lights a little better.

 What color Temperature to use?

The color temperature of lights in gyms, especially in performance areas need to be around daylight. 4000k-5000K beams coming from overhead lighting will create a well-lit alert area for you to work out in. For the best overall lighting effect in your gym, a combination of 4000K and 5000K would be maybe the solution. Have 4000K overhead LED lights closer to the mirror for that downlighting effect to get a better reflection of yourself in the mirror. Use the 5000K beams overhead right in the performance area to remain alert and ready. Using a combination of these 2 color temperatures would produce a garage gym that promotes performance and positivity!

How to Distribute the Lights?

Installing overhead lights is the most common lighting effect in commercial gyms and for the home or garage gym it should be the same. Although I have seen some commercial gyms use track lights, the easiest for your home would be recessed ceiling light. These produce bright narrow beams at 4000K-5000K ranges and can come in dimmable ranges. Meaning they can meet whatever requirements you need. They’re installation is simple and being a recessed can means they won’t take up any space. Space for home gyms is usually something that needs to be preserved for equipment, so make the lights as subtle as possible.

How to Install Recessed Ceiling Lights?

Downlighting, especially for gyms needs to be spread out. Start 2 feet away from the wall with your first light then continue from there.

Evenly distribute the lights. Using a general method: measure the height of your ceiling and use half of that number for installation intervals. E.g. 12ft high ceiling, 6 intervals evenly spread out across the room.

Don’t get to close to the walls on either side. Keep the downlights within the center of the room and 1-2 ft away from the walls either side. This allows for a better lit performance area. And will also provide some good downlighting affect if you have a mirror installed.

What’s the Best downlights to Buy?

SANSI’s LED 15W downlight is a great addition to any home garage gym. They come in 4000K color temperatures, which prefer personally as its close enough to daylight to induce alertness, but still yellow enough to get a nice darker more detailed reflection in the mirror. If They’re simple to install and can be utilized in any conditions. Ceiling or wall mount them if needs be. These lights can improve your vision, performance and overall feeling in the home gym. With home gyms appearing to be on the rise in 2021. Planning prevents poor performance! So let’s map out the area we have, see how many lights we need and get training into 2021!