Watts vs. lumens

New ways of measuring these technologies are coming with new technologies.

Know the light: the unit used to measure the brightness of a light bulb. You may have noticed lumens in the bulbs, as the FTC now requires all light bulb manufacturers to list information such as the number of lumens on a label similar to food nutrition labels. You may also be wondering what happened to the watts and why they are being replaced.

The LED-lighting difference

Before LEDs, watts were the standard way to estimate the brightness of light bulbs. However, watts only measure the amount of energy a light bulb consumes, and with the introduction of new energy-saving technologies such as LEDs, energy use is no longer relevant when looking for the brightness of a light. This is now expressed in lumens, which measure the amount of light they produce instead. The higher the amount of lumens, the brighter the light

New packaging

All bulb packs are now required to display information on a label similar to this, including lumen brightness and also life expectancy and estimated energy cost per year.

Search for lumens

As more and more energy-efficient bulbs enter the market, you'll start to see fewer watts and more light. Use the numbers below to translate watts into lumens to ensure a perfect combination when replacing incandescent bulbs with LEDs.

Note: These numbers are based only on incandescent bulbs and all numbers are estimates.

150 W x 2600 lm
100 W s 1600 lm
75 W s 1100 lm
60 W x 800 lm
40 W s 450 lm
25 w x 200 lm

TYD ELECTRONICS