How To Determine How Many LED Lumens You’ll Need To Properly Light Your Space (2024)

FAQs

How To Determine How Many LED Lumens You’ll Need To Properly Light Your Space? ›

To determine the needed lumens, you will need to multiply your room square footage by your room foot-candle

Depending on the bulb and the manufacturer, LED technology typically produces 75-110 lumens/watt. So, LEDs are generally about 7 times more efficient at producing light than incandescent bulbs. Use a 7:1 ratio as a rough guide when selecting an LED bulb to replace an incandescent bulb.

Summary: Calculating Total Lumens Needed for a Room

Multiply your room square footage by the footcandle requirement. For example, a 100-square foot living room, which needs 20 foot candles, will need 2,000 lumens. A 100-square foot dining room, which needs 40 foot-candles, will need 4,000 lumens.

It follows that: lumen = lux x mq. Therefore, being aware of the ideal light intensity and surface size for each room you intend to illuminate, you can determine how many lumens each room needs and, consequently, find the most suitable light bulb or light installation.

As a handy rule of thumb, a sitting room or bedroom will generally require around 10-20 lumens per square foot, while a bathroom or kitchen will need a stronger level of lighting, at around 70-80 lumens per square foot. To work out the lumens you need, simply multiply the square footage of the room by this figure.

To determine the needed lumens, you will need to multiply your room square footage by your room foot-candle requirement. For example, a 100 square foot living room, which needs 10-20 foot-candles, will need 1,000-2,000 lumens. A 100 square foot dining room, which needs 30-40 foot-candles, will need 3,000-4,000 lumens.

For the average space of 250 square feet, you'll need roughly 5,000 lumens as your primary light source (20 lumens x 250 square feet). In your dining room, you'll want about 30 lumens per square foot on your dining table (you want to see your food, but not examine it), so if your table is 6' x 3', that's 540 lumens.

This can easily be done by multiplying your total wattage by 1.2 and then finding a power supply rated for that wattage. Say for example we have 4 runs of LED strips that run at about 12 watts each. Simply multiplying these will show that our system wattage should be right around 48 Watts.

If you're looking for the short answer to this, you can install 1 downlight per square metre, leaving 1 metre spacing's between each downlight and a distance of 1/2 a metre from the walls. This would generally get you the correct, bright and even lighting results.

The luminous intensity is obtained by multiplying EV with the square of the distance a (in m): Iv = Ev * a2 = Ev * 0.01 m2. With a small measuring angle such as 0.01 sr, even LEDs with a very narrow emission angle 〈± ö < 10°) can be measured precisely.

What is the formula for calculating illumination? ›

Lux indicates how much luminous flux (lumen) of a light source arrives per unit area of a receiver surface. The value lux is purely a receiver quantity. Illuminance is calculated with the following formula: Lux [lx] = luminous flux [lm] / area [m2].

Generally, you'll need one can light for every four to six square feet. The taller your ceiling height, the more can lights you'll need.

Multiply width of the room x length of room x 1.5 = amount of total minimum wattage needed. Divide by 60 to get the number of 60-watt equivalent bulbs required. Then, add up the wattage in each bulb in each fixture to figure out how many light fixtures are needed.

This can be thought of as light intensity within a specific area. Lumens: The total output of visible light from a light source is measured in lumens. Typically, the more lumens a light fixture provides, the brighter it is. One lux is equal to one lumen per square meter (lux = lumens/m²).

Anything up to about 500 lumens won't feel bright enough as a good overall amount of light in an average-sized room in your house. It will be required to take into account more than one bulb or lamp, up to 1000 to 2000 lumens for a living room, if you want a brighter light.

Picture a candle set in the middle of a sphere measuring 0.60 meters (2 feet) in diameter. If we cut a hole that measures 0.09 square meters (1 square foot) in the centre of this sphere, the light that shines through is what we define as a lumen. A foot-candle equals one lumen per square foot.

Now coming to the main question how much lumen is a 60 watt led light bulb? To replace a 60 wattage traditional bulb with a modern LED bulb you need to divide the 60 watts/ 5, and the result is 12 watt. This is a standardized method. A 60 watt bulb will produce 700 to 800 lumens.

In a completely dark environment, 3000 lumens would appear extremely bright. However, in a well-lit area, the same light source might not appear as dazzling. Another factor impacting the perception of brightness is the beam angle and distribution of the light.