Lumens vs Watts: Buying light bulbs in the 21st century

[FlyingPenguin]

I've been forcing myself to think in Lumens instead of watts for a while now. All modern bulbs should have the lumens printed on the bulb somewhere.

The wife has a hard time thinking in lumens so I printed this on a card and taped it to the inside of the cabinet door where we store our bulbs:

The brightness, or lumen levels, of the lights in your home may vary widely, so here's a rule of thumb:

- To replace a 100-watt incandescent bulb, look for a bulb that gives you about 1600 lumens. If you want something dimmer, go for less lumens; if you prefer brighter light, look for more lumens.
- Replace a 75W bulb with an LED bulb that gives you about 1100 lumens
- Replace a 60W bulb with an LED bulb that gives you about 800 lumens
- Replace a 40W bulb with an LED bulb that gives you about 450 lumens

A lot of info including color temperature differences here: https://www.earthled.com/blogs/led-ligh ... -and-watts

I've never had a problem with color temperatures because I used to be a stage hand. Stage lighting is ALL about color temperature.

[Pugsley]

I love how people think that soft white is sunlight. It is no where near it. Way too much red.

[Key Keeper]

When I shifted to led for my reef tank, it was quite a learning curve coming from halides and T5s. I prefer cool white LED as it has a true white output instead of nasty yellow daylight color. Works great int he kitchen in our recessed lights. Plus they dont have to ramp up like the florescent bulbs.

[FlyingPenguin]

Yeah, I went through a lot of soul searching on color temps for the new house. Most of the rooms have secondary recessed ("high-hat") lighting in addition to whatever the main lighting is for the room. This is the fashion in newer houses - and it's nice. LOT's of lighting if you need it. My old house feels like a dark cave now. This recessed lighting is ostensibly for use when cleaning the room, or working on something that requires a lot of light. I picked 4000K for all the recessed lighting (often called cool white).

The primary fixtures in all the bedrooms, baths, and main living spaces are 2700K (warm white, or traditional incandescent color).

There are areas, though, that get a lot more daylight exposure like the family room/kitchen/breakfast nook, so we decided to go all 4000K in there (except the kitchen counter which has low hanging 2700K lights). All under counter lights in the kitchen are 4K. Laundry room is all 5500K LEDs (bright white like fluorescent tubes, so you can see any spots on your clothes), as is the pantry closet.

Worked out nice. You get the warm 2700K lighting in most of the living areas, but if you need to clean the room, or wire up a TV, or assemble a piece of furniture, I can pop on the 4K high-hats.

For the chandeliers I went with 3000K LED fake-filament glass bulbs. They really look amazingly like real incandescent bulbs. I replaced all the tubular (music stand type bulbs) in our china cabinet with 3000K LED tubular glass bulbs.

There are so many LED options now, at reasonable prices, it just doesn't make any sense not to go that way.

I still have incandescent bulbs on one large chandelier, but that's because the dimmer it's on was adjusted improperly. Now that I've learned more about how LEDs work and how to adjust the dimmers for them, I'll eventually switch them out.

The only real down side to LEDs is their inability to dim down past around 40%. But I think the technology will continue to improve.

They even have LED replacements now, for fluorescent tubes.

[FlyingPenguin]

Here's a nice comparison in my office:

This is 4000K recessed lighting (the "cleaning" lights) and 4000K under cabinet lights under the hutch. I like to turn on the 4000K lights on when the window is open (window faces the south). Also prefer this when working on the work bench:


This is the warmer 2700K light from the ceiling fan fixture which I prefer at night and especially when gaming (I'll dim it way down for gaming):