Work lights

LED work lights put light where the ceiling lamp can't reach

What are work lights? Portable LED lights that top up the room lighting wherever you're working on the car: in the wheel arch, in the engine bay, along the door shuts and inside the cabin. The floodlight on the tripod gives you base light, while the hand lamp and head torch take light right to the job. You choose them by light spread, mounting and power source.

Work lights are portable lights that add to your ceiling lighting exactly where you're working. The lighting experts at licht.de put their role like this: small hand lights supplement the main lighting, and work on the underside needs its own task lighting. So an LED work light doesn't replace room lighting. It's the tool for the spots the room lighting can't reach. For the overview of room and task lighting, head to Lighting.

• Light where the car casts its own shadow. In the wheel arch, under the sill and in the door shuts, very little of the ceiling light gets through, because the car itself is in the way. That's why the lighting experts at licht.de call for dedicated task lighting for work on the underside, and those are exactly the spots a work light covers.
• Two jobs, two designs. Work lighting splits into base light for the space around the car and light right at the job. The floodlight handles the first; the hand lamp and head torch handle the second, pulling light into the corners the floodlight can't reach.
• One battery system for tools and lights. FLEX's 18-volt lights share the battery system with the brand's 18-volt machines. With an 8.0 Ah battery, FLEX quotes 15.5 hours of run time at 1,000 lumens for its cordless floodlight.

Detailing1's tip from the shop: Don't set up one very bright light; set up two from different directions. A single floodlight throws hard shadows into the door shuts and wheel arch and dazzles you the moment you look into the paint. The second light source, a smaller floodlight from the opposite side or a hand lamp on its hook, fills in exactly those shadows. A second light direction can lift shadows that a stronger single light leaves in place.

Work lights back up the ceiling lamp in hidden spots

A work light tops up the room lighting in hidden spots, so you can see dirt, screws and edges and put your brush, towel or machine exactly where it needs to go.

On car care forums, users get specific about the dark zones on a car: doors, sills and the interior. The door shut sits in the shadow of the door, and hardly any light falls into the wheel arch from above. The ceiling light hits the roof, bonnet and floor. On the vertical and hidden surfaces where you're working with brush and towel, very little of it arrives. That's not a flaw in the ceiling lamp; it's geometry.

When you polish, the job changes. To work, you need even light with as few shadows as possible, so you can guide the machine safely. To inspect, you need directed light whose reflection in the paint gives away fine scratches. Colour rendering, on the other hand, describes how true to life colours look under a lamp. It helps with colour matching; a missing value on its own doesn't tell you whether the light will show up scratches.

This page is about light for working on the whole car. For targeted checks for swirls (fine circular scratches) and holograms (shimmering polishing marks), you'll find the range and how to use it under Paint inspection lights. What matters is the actual task: lighting up the work area, spotting scratches or comparing paint colours.

The tripod gives you base light, the hand lamp takes it into the wheel arch

Every design has its place around the car: the floodlight stands on the tripod, the hand lamp hangs on its hook, the head torch sits on your head, and the light output follows from that.

The site floodlight, the classic work light on a tripod, is your base light. It stands to the side of the car, with FLEX on a tripod from 1.1 to 2.2 metres high, and lights up a whole side of the vehicle from above. FLEX's floodlight has three light panels on two pivot axes, which you can focus on one spot or fan out across a surface, plus three settings of 1,000, 2,000 and 4,000 lumens. You'll find this design under LED floodlights, together with the compact cordless floodlight without a tripod.

The cordless floodlight is the in-between step. It's compact, weighs 0.6 kilograms without battery according to FLEX, and puts out up to 1,000 lumens. FLEX gives its cordless floodlight a head that tilts through 180 degrees and rotates through 270 degrees, plus magnetic strips and a hook. The hand lamp is lighter and slimmer, with FLEX 0.4 kilograms without battery, with a hook and belt clip. It hangs on its hook right where you're working, say under the open bonnet. More on this under Hand lamps.

The head torch solves a different problem: its light follows your eyes, and both hands stay free. That counts in the interior, on the sills and anywhere you're working with brush and towel at the same time. The FLEX head torch weighs 54 grams and puts out up to 150 lumens, see Head torches. The rolling tripod that lets you wheel a light freely around the car, along with other accessories, is under Work light accessories.

Lumens are printed on the box, lux is what lands in the wheel arch

How many lumens a work light needs depends on distance and light spread: what counts is the illuminance in lux that actually reaches your work area.

Lumens describe luminous flux, meaning the total amount of light a lamp gives off. Lux describes illuminance, meaning how much of it lands on one square metre of surface. For you, that means the same light delivers far more lux at half a metre than at two metres, because the light spreads over a larger area as the distance grows. So the lumen figure on the box says little about how bright it gets where you're working.

That's why AUTO BILD doesn't rate work lights in its test by the lumen claim, but measures lux at half a metre and one metre, both in the centre and at a 50-centimetre radius. The second reading shows how evenly the light is spread. In the same test, one lamp stood out for the wrong reasons: its light was so concentrated it was almost dazzling, while everything around it stayed dark. That's exactly the light pattern you don't want when you're working.

The recommendations for workplaces give you a rough guide: a few hundred lux for working and repairs, around 1,000 lux with high colour rendering for polishing and inspection. Colour temperature in kelvin, on the other hand, describes the colour of the light. The FLEX floodlights shine a neutral white 4,000 kelvin. That's fine for working; for judging paint colours, colour rendering counts as well.

Beyond brightness, three practical questions decide it. How does the light attach: hook, magnet, tripod thread or headband? Where does the power come from: battery, mains or both? And how much does it weigh where it's supposed to hang? A light you can't get to where you're working won't help you, whatever its lumen rating.

The light moves around the car with each step

During a detail, the work area keeps changing, so you don't set your lights up once; you reposition them with every step.

At the wash bay, the light belongs outside the splash zone. FLEX explicitly states that its 18-volt lights must not be used in the rain, and gives no IP rating. The IP rating says how well a housing is sealed against dust and water. For wash areas, licht.de recommends lights protected against water jets. In plain terms: during the foam and pressure-washer pass, the floodlight stands well back, not next to the wheel. According to FLEX, the head torch has no water protection at all, so it stays out of the way completely while you wash.

The wheel arch and engine bay are where the hand lamp and cordless floodlight on a hook come in. Hang them from a suitable point that can take the weight, so the light falls across the surface from the side, not straight into your eyes. Inside the car, the head torch takes over, because the sills, door entries and footwells sit where no floodlight from outside can reach. When you polish, the base light stands on the tripod, and a dedicated paint inspection light handles the check afterwards.

Two things will otherwise cost you kit. Cleaner doesn't belong on the lens: other manufacturers' instructions rule out solvents such as brake cleaner for cleaning, because they damage the lens. FLEX gives no information on the chemical resistance of its lenses, so keep spray mist away. The lens also gets hot in use. FLEX warns against touching it and, for the head torch, says not to cover the head.

Demand for LED work lights rises every year from September and peaks in November. When it gets dark early outside, car care moves under artificial light, and that's when you're missing light in the wheel arch and along the sills.

In winter, temperature counts too. For the cordless floodlight and the site floodlight, FLEX specifies operation between minus 10 and plus 40 degrees, with charging between 4 and 40 degrees. If you're working outside in the cold, store the batteries indoors and charge them there, not in a cold car.

Allow more time for your first setup than you'd like. Getting the tripod, the second light and the hand lamp positioned so nothing dazzles you and no shadow falls on your work area takes a while. Remember the spots that work, so you can fall back on them the next time you set up.

If you own FLEX 18-volt batteries, the hand lamp and floodlight run on the same packs

The work lights at Detailing1 come from FLEX and are built as a system: the 18-volt lights run on the same battery packs as the brand's 18-volt cordless machines.

In the FLEX system, that means the FLEX "TL 4000 18.0/230" LED site floodlight with tripod (18V), the FLEX "WL 1000 18.0" LED cordless floodlight (18V) and the FLEX "WL 300 18.0" LED cordless hand lamp (18V). All three run only on FLEX 18-volt packs, which come in 2.5, 5.0 and 8.0 amp-hours; packs from FLEX's smaller voltage class don't fit. The amp-hours give the capacity: the higher the figure, the longer the same cordless work light stays on.

The three 18-volt lights are supplied without battery and without charger. If you already polish with FLEX 18-volt machines, you use the machine's battery and charger for the light as well.

The site floodlight can also run off the 230-volt mains, via a standard IEC kettle-plug cable that isn't included. A USB port on the floodlight charges your phone, and its tripod thread also takes a line laser or a camera. The FLEX "MWL 150 4" multi-purpose head torch, by contrast, has a built-in battery that charges via USB-C, and a clip for the PXE 80 cordless polisher. The FLEX "WLS-70-190" mobile light stand rolls around the car on five castors.

To be straight about it: if you don't have FLEX machines, the battery is an extra purchase, and that's where the sums get decided. The alternatives are mains-powered lights or lights from other brands that take several battery systems. If you already work in the FLEX system, you'll find the matching machines under FLEX.

Dirt on the magnetic base can scratch the paint

Which work light you need depends on where you work and what you do, and its limits matter just as much as its brightness.

If you're detailing under a weak ceiling light, start with a floodlight on a tripod as base light and a hand lamp for the wheel arch and engine bay. If you do a lot of interior work, the head torch is the first addition. If you polish, set up base light and inspect with a paint inspection light. And if you spend whole days on the car, plan for a second battery that charges while the first one is lit, or use mains power.

Specialist detailing retailers stage the kit the same way: a tripod light for beginners, a hand lamp and head torch on top for the more advanced, and several tripod lights with head torches and area floodlights for pros. The order matches the setup above: base light first, then light for the spots the base light doesn't reach.

The limits belong in the same calculation. Everything you need on the missing IP rating is covered above at the wash bay. For the three 18-volt lights, there's no manufacturer figure for colour rendering, so you can't compare how true to life they show paint colours on the basis of such a value. The LEDs are built in permanently on the cordless floodlight, the site floodlight and the head torch. If one fails on the WL 1000 or TL 4000, you replace the whole light. And the site floodlight weighs 8.2 kilograms without battery, so it needs a level, solid footing.

According to FLEX, you clean the head torch dry only, with a brush or cloth. Charge it only indoors and at 0 degrees or above, not in a cold car.

In the end, the mounting decides whether a magnetic work light helps or harms on a car. Dirt and metal filings on the magnetic base can scratch the paint. FLEX only permits the magnetic strips on steel that can carry the weight including the battery. On a painted car, you therefore hang the light on its hook from a suitable point that can take the weight, or stand it on the tripod, instead of sticking it onto the bodywork. The magnet belongs on the workbench, the shelf and bare steel parts.