Customer Reviews for Lithonia Lighting 2-Light White Electronic Channel Fluorescent Strip Light

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] We are adding a bathroom onto our house and hung this fixture in it. It was super easy to assemble and hang. It lights up my small bathroom well and will look great when I get my ceiling and the rest of the bathroom finished.

Awesome product, easy to assemble.

As for working as a light I’m sure it’s fine. However it doesn’t have a guard over the bulbs, which my old light has. So I pulled the guts out of the new light & placed them into my old light’s case, added the guard & it was as good as new! Home Depot is where I purchased my old light - you no longer carry it. By the way this light takes a T12 bulb, however, I am using a T8 instead, same brightness with less energy cost.

Works and installs perfectly!

I used this light to grow seedlings under lights in the basement. It worked perfectly and even had a 5' cord to plug in, although the salesclerk told me it was a shorter cord, so i was pleased when it was longer.

Light went up very easily. I used L braces to mount inside floor joist's in the basement.

I used nearly 20 of these fixtures to put new lighting into a workshop that has a suspending ceiling, but with the ceiling so close to the joists above that normal fluorescent fixtures for suspended ceilings would not have enough clearance to fit between joists and ceiling frame. I mounted either one or two of these above each 2' x 4' panel that was going to be replaced by a lighting fixture. I mostly used heavy sheet metal "L" brackets (some places call these "braces", but it is just a strip of sheet steel bent into an "L" shape). I had to drill holes in the top of each fixture to secure the "L" brackets (make sure to use flat washers on the side of the fixture sheet metal opposite the "L" bracket, since that metal is thin), then used deck screws to attach the other face of the "L" brackets to the side of the joists...usually so that the bottom of each fixture was slightly above the bottom of the adjacent joist....it was all about having enough clearance between the bulbs that would go into the fixture, and the planned plastic diffuser panels that would go below into the ceiling frame. These fixtures are somewhat of a kit, but not as bad as some other reviewers make them out to be. The end plates (caps) are loose and you need to tap those in until their tabs engage with the fixture. The reason these are loose is that the primary conduit knockouts are on those end plates, and it is much easier to deal with knocking those out and installing the conduit fittings BEFORE you install the plates on the fixture. On most of the fixture I bought, I also had to install the fluorescent bulb connectors (the so-called "tombstones", due to their shape) by snapping them into the cutouts on the fixture; there were no instructions for this, but the label on the included electronic ballast shows which tombstones go where. The fixture's sheet metal is pretty thin, but adequate for the job as long as you install them in an appropriate situation, such as screwed to a solid surface (which will provide a lot of support and strength for the fixture). I would not recommend hanging these from cords or chains on the ends, since the fixture is clearly not stiff enough on its own to be supported only from the ends. Lithonia (and others) make better fixtures for that kind of installation. But if you screwed this fixture to a length of wood (2x4, strip of plywood, etc), and THEN hung the wood by chains, that would work OK. On about half of the fixtures that I installed, the sheet metal was slightly bent somewhere, but it is thin enough to straighten with just your hands. A more expensive fixture would not be so easily dinged or bent. I found the side walls of ALL the fixtures I installed were bend outwards too far, which made the tab & slot mounted plates (that the tombstones mount to) excessively loose, and also the cover would not fit the fixture with the walls bent out this way. I could easily bend them in somewhat during assembly. I agree with some other reviewers that the cover (which covers the internal wiring and the ballast) is hard to fit properly. There is a very poorly described (in the instructions on the box) metal clip that is supposed to fit through a hole on the cover, then through a slot in the fixture, and then you twist the clip 90 degrees to lock the cover to the fixture. Well, I could not get even a single clip to fit into the holes properly, because the tolerances on the fixture were excessively loose, and the hole & slot for the clip would not line up. After a lot of messing around and cussing over this, I just grabbed a box of self-tapping sheet metal screws (as used for HVAC ductwork) and power dilled a couple of these screws into each fixture on either side of the hole & slot that I was supposed to use. This works 100 times better that the crummy way the manufacturer intended. Now the covers are on tight, they can't fall off, but they can still be easily removed when necessary. The fixture comes with an electronic ballast that supports two 4' fluorescent bulbs. It is marked for two T12 bulbs, which are obsolete and increasingly more difficult to buy and replace. The ballasts on mine are marked that they support T8 bulbs, which are newer and better than the T12 bulbs. But I was using only Philips "InstantFit" T8 LED bulbs, and the included ballast is one of the many kinds supported by the Philips LED bulb, so I was not concerned about the whole T12 issue. The fixture has three 1/2" conduit knockouts on each end, a couple 1/2" knockouts on top (one near each end), a couple of 3/4" knockouts on top (one near each end), and a few more knockouts on the sides. If you plan to use the end knockouts, you need to do the knocking out and installing of the conduit fixtures BEFORE installing the end plates. As other reviewers have noted, the quality of the metal stamping that gives us these knockouts is pretty spotty. On some of mine, the knockouts were good and punched out quickly and easily. On many of mine, it took a lot of knocking and cussing to open them. One some of mine, the punching was so feeble that it was impossible to knock the darned things out. After the first few fixtures, I kept a power drill with metal cutting hole saw (in the appropriate size for 1/2" conduit fitting) at the ready, and if a knockout even started to almost look iffy, I just blasted it out with the hole saw instead. The fixture's ballast has the usual black and white wires that you have to look up to power, and a green colored grounding screw that you should connect. I have to laugh (& cringe) at some of the reviews which crow about how bright these fixtures are! I don't know about theirs, but my fixtures did not make any light until I installed the 4' bulbs of my choosing, and then hose bulbs made whatever amount of light they are capable of.....the fixture has little to do with it, other than being painted white for some reflectivity. So, these are rather cheap, but still good enough quality to be useable.

I would give this five stars except that all of the edges are sharp. I bought five of these to install as indirect lighting above our kitchen cabinets. The kitchen lighting is now awesome. No more working in shadows from the ceiling pot lights. My wife is happy-- so I'm happy.

I used this to replace an broken fixture on our kitchen ceiling. First I must say it came with NO installation instructions. Because of that, I paid very careful attention to how the existing fixture was installed and wired so that I could use that as a guide for installing this new one. I did need to purchase toggle bolts to install as it did not come with any hardware. It took me less than an hour to remove the old fixture and install this new one. My only complaint (aside from no instructions), was that it was very difficult to remove the punch out for the electrical as it was not cut enough on all sides. Overall I am satisfied with this new light, it works perfectly and the price was good.

I purchased about 14 of these lights for my warehouse. About half of them did not work. Either the ballast or pin sockets were bad. I am replacing the ballasts, which cost about $20 each and or the pins $10. It is less expensive and easier for me to change the ballasts and pins, then to remove and rewire the cans. I wanted a simple shop light and they were the wrong choice.

I needed to replace my old garage light, so I picked this one up. There were no surprises. It was easy to set up, and easy to install--3 wires, 2 screws.

I installed 12 of these 2-bulb 4-foot fluorescent fixtures in my garage. They are pretty good quality, they look good, and they are very easy to install. I love the electronic ballast and T8 bulbs - they light up instantly, even at 25 degrees F. They take a few minutes to warm up to full brightness in this cold weather, but after that they throw plenty of high-quality light. Several of the fixtures had scuff marks in the paint, even though the boxes were not damaged. This didn't bother me for use in a garage, but you might want to check each unit if that would bother you.

Product not very well made, very flimsy materials, had a terrible time lining up slots for connections. Many very sharp areas, have to be careful and watch for cuts. Once the light is assembled and installed it is a decent light. Overall for the price not too bad, but it took a long time to get it installed.

When Vic, the owner of our machine shop, came to me and said "Let's go to Home Depot and pick up some T8 light fixtures and mount them on our jib cranes", I wasn't sure what results to expect. After having done just that, they made such a lighting improvement over the machines and work area that we installed double rows of these fixtures on several jibs. Machine operators usually can't get enough light to read prints and measuring instruments. As the photos show, we used Home Depot 2x4's and drywall screws to fabricate mounting brackets. By conjoining the fixtures, we were able to save space and material as well. We installed Ty-Wraps around the ends of each fixture to hold the bulbs securely. These fixtures have proven to be a very low cost alternative to the higher priced variety of shop lighting. They are light weight and do not interfere with the normal operation of the crane. I recommend these fixtures for a low cost high efficiency install.

I recently installed 8 of these in my garage and was so impressed with the ease of install and resonable price i added 8 more for a total of 16. A novice can easily instal this fixture and improve their visability in a matter of minutes!

For the record this is a great product. In order to get the bulbs to light up you must look at the ballast. It tells you how to put what color wires on what bulb. As a professional I know this, and can understand a DIY'ers confusion not knowing this due to the lack of instructions given by the manufacturer. This is a manufacturer that produces these lights for professionals. I used 2 T12 Day light 40W bulbs and can't be happier! It is for my garage and gives off plenty of light. I have a big Garage and am considering purchasing 2 or 3 more for the other areas of the garage.

I bought 2 of these to replace the old T12 fixtures in my kitchen. They are lighter and so much better using the 32 watt daylight bulbs. The lights are recessed and I painted the inside of the recess with gloss white paint and the light in the kitchen is amazing! I had no problem with assembly and reused the toggle bolts from the old fixtures.

Ballast incorrectly mounted so that tube end clip wiring wouldn't reach the ends of the fixture. End covers for fixture were missing out of the package. Metal cover that runs length of fixture needed rework before it fit properly at attach points. After remounting ballast, and making some sheet-metal end caps for fixture, it worked satisfactorily. Since it was simply a shop light, I didn't go through the hassle to return it as I should have.

Good service in store easy to order and nice clerk

Fluorescent fixtures are very hard to come by anymore. Everything in the stores is LED, and if you really want fluorescent you will likely need to order it. That means you can't see the item before you buy it. This item performs fine, however the construction is a bit flimsy. Once you get it installed, this is less of an issue as you don't touch it (except to change bulbs). Delivery was interesting as well. The item showed in a local warehouse less than 25 miles away took over a week to deliver to the store.

works well very bright and easy to install

Good price and quality

This went in like a dream.

Good. Value for the price

Well built and easy to use

Lots of light, good value

These fixture were useful to replace prior installed lighting.

Rating provided by a verified purchaser

Rating provided by a verified purchaser