8' is the standard commercial size (what you see in most stores, warehouses, shops, etc.).

LB does make a good point about dust. I don't have much of an issue with that due to central dust collection and an overhead powered filter.

I have 8'ers in my garage, they flicker like a son of a gun now that it is cold.

To better distribute the light and to protect the bulbs, I have used clear acrylic diffusers on my 4-bulb 4' fixtures. The only downside is that you have to clean them about once a year, but that only takes a few minutes.

Fourescent Diffusers

You can fix this by changing your ballast to a 0 degree ballast. If your lights are the typical $10-15 cheapies, you may as well buy new fixtures...

Or, you could heat your garage to over 50 degress -- the lights would work fine!!!

Basement workshop, I'm familiar with it, been working in the same one for going on 40 years

for a WORKSHOP, use florescent lights, period.

This cluster*%$# is where I work. Just in this picture there's 13 florescent fixtures. There's 8 more in the other rooms. There's no way I could see to work without them. There's not an incandescent light anywhere in this basement, I'm even using the spiral florescent's in my individual work lights...

FR - tap 3 times if you can hear me in there!

Mr Goldberg called, he want's his contraption back.

Heating the garage to 50 degrees would mean that it will be warmer than my house. The flicker doesn't bother me as I am not in the garage too long when it is cold. Insulating the garage is on the to do list but that means I will be finishing off a bonus room above the garage.

Just what temperature do you keep your house? We used to keep ours at 65 in the winter, but my admiral seems to prefer 75 these days...

The tstat downstairs is typically 63 while we keep the tstat upstairs at 61. the past couple of days i had the pellet stove running and it is 70 in the family room. we haven't used teh pellet stove too much this year because the rest of the downstairs gets cold.