How bright is that bulb?
Bulbs are sold in lumens and bought in watts, because everyone learned brightness on a technology that no longer exists.
Almost exactly 60 W incandescent
800 lm is brighter than 4 of the 9 references on this page.
Reference figures are measurements and are rounded; the unit conversion behind them is exact.
| Reference | Size | Yours ÷ theirs | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| candle | 12 lm | 66.7× | |
| night light | 50 lm | 16× | |
| 25 W incandescent | 220 lm | 3.64× | |
| 40 W incandescent | 450 lm | 1.78× | |
| 60 W incandescent | 800 lm | 1× | |
| 75 W incandescent | 1,100 lm | 0.727× | |
| car headlight | 1,200 lm | 0.667× | |
| 100 W incandescent | 1,600 lm | 0.5× | |
| bright ceiling fitting | 3,000 lm | 0.267× |
Worth knowing
- A 60 W incandescent bulb produced about 800 lumens. An LED does the same on 8 W — a tenfold efficiency gain in about fifteen years.
- A candle produces roughly 12 lumens, which is why a candlelit room is around 1 lux and reading by one is genuinely hard.
Frequently asked
How many lumens replace a 60 W bulb?
800 lumens. The rough mapping is 450 for 40 W, 800 for 60 W, 1 100 for 75 W and 1 600 for 100 W.
Does a higher lumen number mean better light?
Only brighter. Colour temperature and colour rendering index matter more for how the light looks — a 2 700 K bulb with CRI above 90 will look far better than a brighter one at 4 000 K and CRI 80.