Lumens or Watts: Choose the Right LED Light Bulb

When purchasing LED light bulbs, customers often make the mistake of checking the watts of the lighting rather than the lumens. If you’re too caught in between the war of  “Is it lumens or watts?” then this blog is just for you.

First, let’s start from the basics.

What does Watts do ?

In simple terms, watts are used for the measurement of energy consumed. Throughout the years we have been using watts to define the brightness of the bulb, especially when buying incandescent bulbs. We usually look for the watt rating and we know that higher the watts, the brighter the bulb would be.  

When it comes to LED bulbs, this is not the case. Let me tell you why.

For example, a 60watt incandescent bulb is incomparable to a 60 watt LED. The brightness of it would simply blind you. The main objective of LEDs is to save energy so naturally, they would consume fewer watts. Therefore, measuring the brightness through watts for a LED light bulb is pointless.

Lm is for Lumens and LED Light Bulb

Lumens (lm) shows us how much light we can get from the bulb. More lm means more brightness. Lumens have been in use for decades to measure the brightness of light-emitting objects. But, it’s only in recent years that distributers started displaying this measurement unit in packaging. 

This is due to the US Federal Trading Commission announcing the requirement of displaying lumens instead of watts in packaging. 

They believe that “Reliance on watt measurements alone make it difficult for consumers to compare traditional incandescent bulbs to more efficient bulbs.”

So, when purchasing LED light bulbs, look for the lm sign to find out the actual brightness of the bulb. Remember, the higher the rating of lumens, the brighter the bulb would be. 

Incandescent vs Energy Saving

A regular incandescent bulb of 60W will give you the brightness of 800 lumens. However, an LED bulb of 800 lumens will only use the energy of 8-12W. Now isn’t that simply amazing?

Here’s a small lumens chart from Cnet.com that would help you in converting lumens to incandescent watts.

As shown in the image above, you can see that the wattage of the LEDs has a variation with each lumens rating. This is due to some brands offering more lumens for less wattage. For the best selection of energy-saving bulbs, choose the highest lm rating you need and select the lowest wattage.

Energy-saving bulbs are the way forward with consumers being more cautious of what they are buying. Since LED bulbs contain no traces of magnesium and UV it makes them environment-friendly as well. 

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