Hexagon LED lights: a complete buyer’s guide
This guide covers what hexagon LED lighting is, how a grid is wired, which sizes suit which spaces, and the specifications to check before buying any kit, including ours.
What hexagon LED lights are
A hexagon light is not one fixture. It is a kit of LED light bars, each a straight LED strip behind a frosted diffuser, joined by connectors at 120°. Assembled, the bars form hexagons, diamonds, chevrons or borders across the ceiling. What makes the system practical is that power passes through the connectors: each bar feeds the next, so a grid of a hundred pieces runs from one driver on one switch.
The numbers that matter
Four figures decide whether a kit will light your space. Check each one on any listing:
- Overall size: the grid’s real footprint, edge to edge. Match it to the ceiling, not the room, and leave about a foot (30 cm) of clear ceiling around the fixture.
- Wattage and efficacy: watts multiplied by lumens per watt gives the light output. Our white grids are rated at 100–120 lm/W, so a 400 W grid at the low end, 100 lm/W, comes to about 40,000 lumens (calculated), the output of eight to ten 4 ft shop lights.
- CRI: color accuracy out of 100. Above 85, colors read true for general work; below it, they look duller and are harder to tell apart. 90 and above is preferred for paint matching, detailing and filming.
- Color temperature: 6500K daylight is the workshop standard. Some fixtures, ours included, also switch to 4000K and 3000K on the fixture itself.
Which size covers which space
Plan on roughly 50 lumens per square foot (540 lumens per m²) for working light. A workbench corner suits a compact piece of one to five hexagons; a single car bay suits a grid of about 8 × 13–16 ft (2.4 × 4.0–4.9 m); a two-car garage suits one large grid or one single-bay grid per bay. Our catalog runs from ZTC503 (3′3″ × 3′9″ / 1.00 × 1.15 m · 78 W at 110 V) up to ZTC202 (23′3″ × 15′4″ / 7.09 × 4.68 m), 357 sq ft: 98 white designs in all, each drawn to scale on its product page so it can be measured against your ceiling before you buy.
White, selectable white, or RGB
Fixed 6500K suits a room used only for work. Selectable white (3000K, 4000K and 6500K on the fixture) lets one kit suit a garage, a gym or a studio; every HexaLuma white kit is selectable. RGB kits add 300+ color modes from a remote and are feature lighting rather than work lighting; see our RGB comparison guide.
Before you buy any kit
- Get the dimensioned drawing, not only a render: you are buying a shape at a size.
- Confirm one-driver wiring and the driver’s output headroom.
- Check the warranty in writing: how long it runs and whether it covers the driver as well as the bars. Ours is a five-year limited warranty on fixtures and drivers.
- Check the parts list: bars, connectors, ceiling mounting hardware and tools should all be in the box.
Complete white systems start at USD $165, delivered free. Browse all 112 designs by pattern.
Questions people ask
- What are hexagon LED lights?
- Hexagon LED lights are modular LED light bars that join at 120° connectors to form hexagonal patterns on a ceiling. Power passes through the connectors, so a grid of dozens of bars runs from one driver on one switch.
- Are hexagon lights bright enough to work under?
- Yes, when sized to the room. A 400–500 W grid comes to roughly 40,000–50,000 lumens, calculated at the low end of the rated efficacy (100 lumens per watt): the output of eight to twelve typical 4 ft LED shop lights, spread across the whole grid rather than along rows.
- How hard is it to install a hexagon light grid?
- The bars click together by hand and fix to the ceiling with the anchors supplied. Most one-car kits take two people an afternoon. The driver’s connection to mains power should be made by a licensed electrician where local code requires it.
- Do hexagon LED lights come in warm white?
- Many do. Every HexaLuma white kit switches between 3000K (warm), 4000K (neutral) and 6500K (daylight) on the fixture. 6500K is the default.
Keep reading
- Hexagon garage lighting ideas: 12 layouts with sizesTwelve layouts from our catalog, with the size and wattage of each.
- Hexagon ceiling lights: patterns, sizes and how to chooseHoneycomb, diamond, framed, chevron, triangle and starburst: where each pattern works.
- Honeycomb LED lights: the pattern, sizes and wiringHow the honeycomb pattern is built, how it compares with rows of shop lights, and the sizes it comes in.