Buy Lumens, not Watts!
But what exactly is a lumen? Put simply, lumens are the total amount of light visible to the human eye from a light source. The higher the lumens the brighter the light. And Watts are the total amount of energy, or power, used to make the light. Lumens aren’t a new concept but due to energy saving lamps storming the market and saving us money it has become necessary to make the switch and use the correct language. If you ordered a 100W LED bulb it’s quite possible you could blind yourself!
How Many Lumens?
This is the tricky bit, as LED technology improves the amount of energy they require to produce more lumens falls. This means that simply relying on Watts could still leave you with light that is much too bright for its purpose. Below we show you how many lumens are equivalent to traditional incandescent bulbs.
- 100W incandescent look for around 1600 lumens
- 75W incandescent look for 1000 to 1100 lumens
- 60W look for 800 to 850 lumens
- 40W look for around 440 lumens
- For candle bulbs at 25W look for 200 to 250 lumens and for 35W look for 330 lumens