Work light question

[Coopers ST]

Would you rather have 3000 lum and over 5000 K for brightness or 7000 lum and 4000 K for brightness?

[Setec Astronomy]

The lumens is brightness and the 4000K/5000K is the color.

Are you asking about ceiling mounted lights for detailing? Or portable lights for detailing? Or mechanic's lights? Or what?

[Coopers ST]

Portable for detailing. Ya I understand what the numbers are. I question would you rather have closer to sun warmth but not at as bright. Or brighter and not as as warm.

[Setec Astronomy]

It's actually not as cool, but whatever. 7000 lumens sounds like too much to me, but what do I know.

[RaydiantDetail]

I think it really depends on what you are correcting.

From my research as I have been working on lighting in my garage and spot lighting recently - for dark colours you want colder lighting i.e. 5000-6000K+, for light colours you want warmer lighting i.e. 3000K- 4000K (The higher temp and higher lumens sometimes can wash out those lighter colours like a light metalic silver I find and make it difficult to spot defects).

My overhead garage lighting is 10,000 lumens total and 5000K temp. I plan on adding around 10,000 to 15,000 more lumens since my garage work space is around 400 sq. ft. You generally need more lumens when covering larger areas - "100 to 150 is what is recommended for "detailed mechanical tasks" by the IES (Illuminating Engineering Society)" - again based on research on other forums. So if you have a 200 sq. ft. garage space you would want around 20,000 lumens for proper brightness in a working space.

I have a few different spot lights of different brightness and colour temps depending on the paint color I am working on - one 3000K and one 5000K which I will use to help spot defects both are probably around 1250 - 1500 lumens. I dont think you would need more than that for a spot light/ working light for looking for defects.

[WileEC]

I prefer 5000K and fewer lumens, since too bright is a problem, but a color shift makes it harder to see the color correctly. I recently tweaked my mobile setup and it's worked out really well. I have two Snap On LED work lights (2000 lumens each, 5000K). I created mounting blocks using stud 2x4 so I could use inexpensive speaker stands for elevation. These stands go higher than work light stands and while much less expensive are designed to hold much more weight, plus they fold down so are easily stored. We have three black vehicles and these are enough that I can use one or both on a side and see all I need to. Too much light makes it hard to really see what's going on. I use a small LED flashlight to check the details of an area.

Good luck!