For many years in the industry, I have seen too many related misconceptions in the lighting and lighting industry. For example, the brighter the lamps at home the better, LED lights have the best lighting effect, no main light design is not bright enough, the living room must be installed with leading lights …… and many other misconceptions.
Today, let’s talk about one of the most common misconceptions: the higher the wattage the brighter the lamps!
I have to say, in the incandescent era, this statement is not too much of a problem. People are always habitually concerned about the wattage of the bulb when choosing a lamp, thinking that the higher the wattage the brighter the lamp.
But with the prevalence of energy-saving lamps and LED lights (I believe that in the near future, LED and OLED will fully replace energy-saving lamps), this argument has been slowly reduced.
The first thing we can be sure of is that the higher the wattage, the more power consumed and the more power hungry.
And the same brightness, incandescent lamps consume about seven times the power of LED lights, which means that low-power LED lights can reach the brightness of high-power incandescent lamps, so LED lights are more energy efficient and power saving.
Under the premise of the same brightness, the lowest wattage is LED lights, energy-saving lamps, and incandescent lamps. Although the cost of LED is relatively high, a long life, energy saving, and environmental protection are more widely used.
So since the use of wattage to judge the brightness has not been able to meet demand, what should be used to believe it?
The scientific basis for judgment is the lumen value.
Lumens (lm) is the unit of luminous flux, representing the luminous brightness, the greater the lumen value, the greater the brightness. General lighting packaging will also be marked on the value, you can directly determine which is brighter.
Sometimes we will see the word “luminous efficiency”, luminous efficiency refers to the luminous flux output per 1W of electricity consumed by the light source, the unit is lm/W. The higher the luminous efficiency, it also means the same brightness, the number of watts needed, less electricity consumed, and more energy efficiency.
Here, again, focus on the science of luminous flux: the origin of the word is actually based on candlelight, in imperial units, the 1-foot candle is equal to 1 lumen per square foot (lm/ft?) an omnidirectional point source of light in 1 candle light emitted when the total luminous flux of 12.57 lumens.
But what most people do not know is that the luminous flux varies from the light source to the light source. The same light source power is different luminous flux is also different.
40W incandescent lamp, about 485lm, but 40W mercury lamp, the lumen value of 1400lm.
In the same space, 100W power ordinary incandescent bulbs and 60W power compared to 100W luminous flux (1520lm) for 60W (810lm) nearly two times.
So even if we choose CFLs, they are not necessarily both bright and energy efficient. We need to pay attention to its luminous efficiency, the same wattage of different brands of light bulbs, luminous efficiency is different, and the brightness is very different.
To sum up, the above point is that, judging the brightness of the bulb, wattage is only a reference value, need to look at its lumen value or luminous efficiency. Only when we can read the light packaging information, we can spend less money!