
We’ve all been part of a similar conversation before. “How bright of a bulb do you need in that light fixture?” BUG Rating System & Nighttime LED Lighting.LED Lifespan: Lumen Maintenance & Your Light Fixtures.Arranging Downlights for Wall & Accent Lighting.

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#Lumens brightness how to
How to Choose and Install Recessed Downlights.Determining Maximum Run Length for Linear Lighting.In many cases a mixture of general and task lighting will be required. There is no firm answer – it will depend on a number of factors including room size and shape, height of ceilings, colour scheme, type of lamps & fitting, task areas and needs of the user.Īs a basic guide below are the lumens required per Sq M (10.76 sq ft) for different room settings. The “useful lumen” rating is normally lower than the total lumen output but has more relevance to a spotlight bulb where useful light is in a forward focussed direction. This is a measurement of useful light emitted in a standardised 90 degree cone (see image). To make comparisons fairer and easier the EU has recently introduced a “useful lumens” rating. With a directional bulb such as GU10 spotlight, the light is emitted in many directions, some of this light (spill light) may not be useful but it is counted in the total lumen rating. Lumens and Useful Lumensįor non-directional bulbs such as a globe, golfball or candle shape, the total lumen output is calculated for all directions. We recommend that you make lm/W one of the first things you look at when choosing LED panels. In simple terms, the 152lm/W panel is 51% cheaper to run than the 80lm/W panel. In comparison, a popular but less efficient edge-lit LED panel may provide 3600 Lumens for 45W. You can think of this as similar to miles-per-gallon in a car, as a higher lm/W means higher efficiency and lower running costs compared to similar but less efficient models.įor example, the highly efficient Compact High Performance+ Back-lit LED Panel offers light output of 3500 Lumens for 23 Watts of power. This figure is a useful way to measure the efficacy of lighting products by measuring the total light output in Lumens divided by the power usage in Watts. 11.5W LED = 60W conventional.īelow is an approximate guide to help you decide the lumen rating for your LED replacement lamp. We also provide a conversion guide to the "old wattages" on the pack e.g. All Integral LED lamps have the lumen rating clearly marked on the packaging and on the lamp base. To achieve the same light output of a 60W conventional bulb you will need an LED lamp with around 800 - 850 lumens. So as a result, using Watts as a guide to brightness is no longer relevant. As technology improves, more lumens will be produced using even less Watts - i.e. That's 87% less energy for the same light output! When using LED more energy is converted to light rather than heat. For example, a 6.5W LED lamp will give a similar light output to a 50W Halogen bulb. With low energy LED lamps, more light output can be achieved with much less power consumption.

This incorrectly linked power consumption (Watts) to light output. We have all bought 50W or 60W conventional bulbs or spotlights in the past expecting a certain level of brightness. The higher the lumen rating the “brighter” the lamp will appear. In simple terms, Lumens (denoted by lm) are a measure of the total amount of visible light (to the human eye) from a lamp or light source. Think of lumens as a "new" way of knowing how bright a lamp is.
