Watt or Lumen with a new lamp

What are you saying? Lumen? With the rise of LED lighting and the displacement of the traditional incandescent lamp, a number of new terms and techniques have been introduced. For the average user, it sometimes takes a while to find out light intensity belongs to which lamp.

Tip in advance: determine the purpose of lighting

Before you run to the store to get a lamp, it is good to consider what purpose the lighting serves. Do you want a lamp that has soft colors and therefore creates more atmosphere? Or do you buy a lamp that you can read comfortably with? When you have this clear to yourself, you can search and select more specifically. You can then better estimate how many Watts or Lumens your lamp should be.

What is Watts?

Most people who think of the power of light think of the term "Watt". This term is derived from James Watt: the inventor of the steam engine. Later, the designation to indicate the amount of energy per second was named after him: the unit "Watt". This is the Watt as we use it today for lighting. 1 Watt = 1 Joule/second. So when you buy a 50 Watt lamp, this lamp converts electrical energy into light and heat at a rate of 50 Joules per second. That's the technical story. But what we want to make clear with this is that the amount of Watt of a lamp says something about the power of the lamp.

What is Lumen?

In addition to the amount of Watt of a lamp, you will undoubtedly have also come across the designation Lumen. But what exactly does Lumen mean? Lumen is a unit to indicate the light intensity of a lamp. This indicates how much light is emitted in total by a lamp. The difference between Watt and Lumen is that Watt indicates how much energy is consumed by a lamp, and Lumen says something about the actual light output. The latter is actually the most relevant to determine which lamp best suits the lighting goal you determined earlier. Watt says something about how much this goal will cost you. The higher the number of Watts, the higher the energy consumption and therefore the cost of the lighting.

Convert from Watt to Lumen

Despite the many conversion tables circulating on the internet, it is not possible to convert Watt to Lumen with LED lighting. This is actually not necessary. Ideally, when it comes to LED lamps, you want as much light as possible (read: Lumen) with as few Watts as possible. You save considerably on lighting costs. For example, we have LED lamps/luminaires that already generate 150 lumens/Watt, the type of lamp also determines how many Lumens it generates. Call BISPARK for more details.