Nice! Yeah I noticed that Cooper Metalux lights seem to be built better than Lithonia. Lithonia fixtures have been very cheesy since the 90s.

Mine is 80s I think, and it's nothing impressive.

Ah I only have a couple of Lithonia light fixtures (the parabolic 2X4 three lamp F32T8 troffer from school and the 2XF8T5 tandem undercabinet light) so I don't know a ton about their quality, but I've heard Metalux fixtures are far better, even today. My Metalux turret is built as good as my 1973 shoplite!

Yeah their quality is a little meh...best Lithonia product I have in use are some commercial-grade, low-profile wraparounds (2XF32T8).

Oh, you mean those basket wraps? I hate those things

Yeah I find even in the 2000s, Metalux fixtures were better built than Lithonia. For instance Metalux fixtures had holes that let you screw the endplates on but I don't think the later Lithonias had them. As for wraparounds, I prefer this kind vs the kind that has the lamps closer to the ceiling.

For modern lights, however I'm a fan of more or less anything that's reasonably well built (thicker metal, screw together parts instead of snap fit) and still has a wide enough ballast channel for magnetic ballasts.

Nice fixture.

@Mike, I'm talking commercial-grade ones...though I DO have a "basket" wraparound in use. I also have their previous generation of residential wraparound, with endplates that actually screw on, etc. (Nice design IMO).
@Joe, yeah I would have to agree. Especially nowadays!
@Darren, thanks! Thought of your 4-lamp slimline actually while working on these

They have several different wrap fixtures so I have no idea what you're talking about. Do you have a pic? Lithonia doesn't have a "commercial grade" line, so it doesn't narrow it down at all...

This is my favorite wrap type. These look cool too but I haven't seen one in person before. I like injection molded wraps best.

They have a curved duffuser and are factory T8 but fit T12 lamps fine and would probably even fit a standard rapid start ballast if I wanted. They're a far cry from the "basket" type, so I'd consider them commercial grade. I'll try to remember to take a pic later.

Ahh, I haven't seem the Lithonia classmate wraps before but they do look pretty well made. My school has these in the N housing in the 1950s rooms. They're mounted on downrods in continuous rows. Those downrods are original to the building, they used to hold louvered fluorescents but they replaced them with the wraps in the 90s. Probably around the same time they disconnected the mercs in the library.

I like those Lithonia Classmate style too, though another one of my favorites is actually the 4ft or 8ft turret. That and (vintage) shoplights and 2X striplights.

@ Joe; oh wow! My high school has those same (type N) wraps throughout the entire campus! See here, here, here, and here. All the ones in my school has programmed start ballasts and 4100K lamps. There are four different variations in use at my school. There's the 4ft version with one F32T8 lamp. Then there's the 4ft version with two lamps, then there's the 8ft (tandem) version with two lamps (one per 4ft section) and then there's the 8ft (tandem) version with four lamps (two per 4ft section). The fixtures with two lamps per 4ft section are more common. I would have personally only used the fixtures with two lamps per 4ft section but the retrofit was probably grant-funded, where the replacement fixtures probably had to match up with the old fixtures. some of the bathrooms used to have 6ft single lamp slimline strips originally, according to paint outlines on the ceiling (the whole school was white-washed before the fixtures were replaced). The replacement fixtures were single lamp F32T8 wraps though. It would have been cool if they were to have retrofitted at least some of the older lights (well, they did retrofit SOME lights, like the display case strips, which were originally single lamp F40/RS, probably NPF ballasts and they retrofitted some recessed baffled lights). It would have been really nice if they just forget about a couple of the old lights and left them up, but apparently they went though the building with a fine-tooth comb, leaving no miss-outs that I have found.

I hate that too! I'd rather see fixtures retrofitted than replaced unless of course the retro hack job is super tacky...the one that does irritate me though is seeing F96T12 slimlines like the one pictured above made into 2XF32T8! Thankfully as you can see mine don't have that problem!

@Mike, yeah I gotta take some pics of those lights too, they have that vintage look to them since they're mounted on downrods instead of flush on the ceiling but I know from seeing older pics of campus that they used to have 4x40w (2 per 4' section) tandem louvered rapid start fluorescents back in the day. The new Lithonia wraps are 2x32w (1 per 4' section) tandem lights. Personally I would kept the louvered fixtures and retrofitted them to T8 but I guess these Lithonia fixtures look pretty neat mounted mounted on the vintage downrods.

Oddly enough they saved a few of the original louvered lights and moved them to the service corridors and utility rooms. They even retrofitted them to T8 lol. I'll sneak a pic of one the next time I see them leave the door open lol.

They probably thought the louvers were too outdated so they put them in those places instead...I wonder what was there originally though?

I like retrofits, but after so many years the paint on the fixture dulls and ends up absorbing more light that is reflected. And if there are diffusers, they turn into major light blockers too, so in order to do a "proper" retrofit, it requires repainting the reflectors and getting new diffusers and it just ends up being "better" to replace the fixtures. Plus fixtures loose parts over the years and then retrofitting just becomes a giant pain in the butt. It would have been nice to see those louvered lights kept up though. Really weird (but awesome!) how they did keep some and re-installed them in another location. With my elementary school, the fixtures were all from 1992 so after 20 years they were still like-new so a retrofit was all that was needed. Personally, I think my middle school (from 1970) should have replaced their fixtures since they're pretty ratty.

Ah here I'm pretty sure they kept the number of lamps the same when they replaced the fixtures. I don't know what the old fixtures looked like (but my history teacher confirmed my suspicions that the lights WERE all replaced a year or two before I came to high school, so I was right next door at the middle school while the conversion was going on. She said she liked the old lights better because they were much dimmer lol.) I still haven't figured out what the old lights looked like though. I'm thinking that they could have already mass-replaced the lights before, maybe replacing the original fixtures with rapid start wraps in the 70s or something. The building was built in sections and I doubt the original lighting from the 50s was kept all the way up until a few years ago. Maybe the smaller janitor closets kept the original fixtures, but now every single nook and cranny has a new Lithonia wrap light. (I've even peeked inside some janitor closets and they too have the new Lithonia wraps.)

Some of the wraps here are on vintage downrods too, which is cool. I really wish I knew what kind of fixtures were in use in the school. There's one classroom that has a bunch of soot on one of the I-beams, meaning that there was a ballast EOL between the time the ceiling was whitewashed and the time they replaced the lights.

All the classrooms and hallways in the main building have wrap lights with two lamps per fixture (except the C2 Wing, which has three-lamp troffers). I'll have to draw up some of the different combinations I've seen with the lighting in the main building's classrooms. They're pretty much the same within a given wing but the B1 and B2 wing has fewer lights per room than the A1 and A2 wings (the A1 wing is the original wing to the building)

My school, built in 1979 and 1985, is still totally T-12! The original wing still looks like it's right out of the 70s too! (that plywood faux plank paneling everywhere, incandescent exit signs, you name it!). Those Metalux/Gibson 1X4 surface mount troffers came out of that building. There's more of those and some Metalux/Gibson wraparounds as well. I know for a fact many still have PCB ballasts too! (Not sure if that's totally legal in a school anymore but shh don't tell anyone) The other wing, built in '85, has some Lithonia 1XF40 strips on the walls in the main hallway with reflectors curved on one side like a shoplight but flat on the other. At least one has a UL tag with handwritten volts and amps, like my Lithonia 2XF96T12 slimline, making me think my slimline is mid-80s too. The classrooms and cafeteria have some sorta-wrap 1X4 fixtures with white plastic diffusers which always like to hang loose at one corner. They also have PITA Y-slot sockets (I've relamped these before actually!). Lamps in use are all T12, and many are 40w too! Oldest lamp I've pulled (And still have!) is a '91 GE Chroma 50, and at one point somebody stuck in tons of 90s and early 00s cool white Watt-Misers. As those started to fail 40w lamps were installed (Sylvania Cool White Plus, and GE-made True-Value/Westpointe SP41s). Now Sylvania "Daylight Full spectrum" (Design 50) lamps are being installed, which I secretly like seeing over the normal cool white.
Also I might add at one point we found a NOS case of Norelco F40CWs and put them in (I know, but they were there and we needed lamps). Kinda funny seeing those in commercial use nowadays!
If there's ever a T8 conversion I will try to score all those Norelcos and PCB ballasts for sure.
And all the Exit signs are still incandescent, too!

Wow your school sounds pretty awesome! Here, all the schools are cinderblock. No wood paneling, and I don't think there ever was either. The classrooms in my elementary school (1992) were drywall but the hallways were cinderblock. In my middle school (1970), I honestly can't remember what the walls were. I think cinderblock. Maybe some walls were drywall. My high school (originally from the 50s, last major additions added around 2000) is cinderblock except for the latest additions, which are drywall. Also, the outside wall in every classroom is drywalled too since they had replaced the original 1950s floor-to-ceiling windows with little rectangle plastic windows that swing out (typical 1970s windows) and the rest of the wall was drywalled (and they did a crappy job too! the joint tape is still visible in a lot of places). A hole in the wall in my history teacher's room shows that the walls are not stuffed with insulation either! Perhaps the insulation was put on in the form of foam pads on the outside of the building...

The newer half of my house (Built in the 90s and 2000s) has all nice newer vinyl-frame double-pane windows thankfully. The older portion (70s and 80s) is all aluminum-frame sliders or picture windows (All double pane but "fogged up" now), and a couple horrible wood-frame double-pane picture windows, and the bathroom has single-pane old school wood frame windows.
The house before this one (The one where we were hearing the whistling sound that turned out to be a Deuce) had Marvin wood-frame double-pane windows from the 70s-80s. Top of the line in their day but IMO they SUCK opposed to modern vinyl ones. (Rot issues in a damp climate)