What Is the Difference Between Wattage and Lumens?

Lumen and Watt, one is represent light other one is power. Both the consumer and the seller can be confused between these two terms.

In traditional lighting, power was the priority topic. Power values were considered when we compare two incandescent bulb. Actually it was not wrong situation. Because more power was more light.

LED technology brought many innovation. Technological developments makes the LEDs more efficient and increased the lumen values. A few years ago 1W LED had 50 lumen luminous flux. But now we are talking about 220 lumen levels for commercial products.

Those informations shows us; it is not correct to compare the power value and the light when the subject light with LED luminaires.

Every manufacturer may use LEDs with different lumens. For this reason, 10W LED light which produced by two different manufacturer may have different light output. Simply, while a brand’s 10W LED lamp illuminates your room, you may not get the same brightness even if you use two of the other brand’s 10W products.

Watt is the measure of how much electricity one consumes. The lumen indicates the total light output of a light source.

If we need LED light fixture in a project or need a simple LED light in our home, lumen value is the key factor that we should take into consideration. If we need more than 1,000 lumens LED light and more, we should look at this value.

However, another issue in here is to reach this lumen value with low power consumption. This is best explained by the lumens per watt, lm/W. But, We will try to explain it simply.

Assume that we have two different products. If both of them are 1,000 lumen, we should prefer the one which has consume less power. For example; if one is 10W with 1,000 lumens; Other one is 9W with 1,000 lumens, in this case we should prefer 9W with 1,000 lumens.

Public enterprises should concentrate on lumen values when preparing their specifications. The maximum power consumption required to achieve this lumen value should also be determined in the specifications.

Written by Emre Yılmaz – Aydınlatma Portalı, Asya Traffic Inc.