LED Light Bulb Guide - How to choose the right LED colour and wattage for your home
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The future is here.
It’s all about LED lightbulb technology in the home; and quite rightly so. The benefits are huge:
1. Up to 90% reduction in energy consumption from traditional lightbulbs.
2. Instant light - unlike CFLs which usually take a few minutes to reach full brightness, LEDs reach full brightness instantaneously!
3. Longer life span - traditional lightbulbs lasted 1000-2000 hours on average whereas a well-built LED with good thermal management can last up to 50,000 hours!
4. Environmentally friendly - thanks to their efficiency, using LEDs helps cut carbon emissions. On top of this, unlike CFLs and Halogens, LEDs do not contain lead and mercury - classified as two of the most toxic heavy metals in the world.
5. Safety - LEDs give off comparatively little heat, making them safer to handle after prolonged use.
BUT with these massive benefits comes a myriad of complications and new terminology which can quickly become confusing when simply trying to buy a new lightbulb for your table lamp or ceiling fitting!
We want to make it nice and easy, so follow our LED guide below to make sure you pick the right lightbulbs for all areas of your home.
Terminology
Before we start off; you’ll see the words ‘Lumens’ and ‘Kelvin’ on every single LED light bulb box nowadays - these two terms are CRUCIAL for picking the right lightbulb; but what do they mean?
Lumens: Where ‘watts’ measured the amount of energy in a light, Lumens measures the brightness of a light. The higher the lumen number, the brighter the LED light bulb will be.
Kelvin: The colour temperature of a light source is measured in degrees of kelvin (K). Typically, Kelvin temperatures for residential lighting fall somewhere on a scale from 2000k (very warm white) to 65000k (daylight).
What strength LED lightbulb do I need?
Because they’re so energy efficient, you’ll see LED lightbulbs that are running on just 3W, 4W or 5W! But how do you know how bright these will be compared to your old 40W or 60W bulbs?
The brightness is now measured in Lumens (see the terminology guide above) but to make things easier, we’ve put together a quick and easy guide.
Simply look for the wattage of your existing light bulb on the chart below and then look to the top row of the table to find the equivalent LED wattage you need!
Colour of Light
As we touched on above, LED colour temperature is measured in Kelvins (K). Choosing the right Kelvin number for your room is critical for creating the right atmosphere! We so often see beautiful rooms ruined by cold, clinical lighting that just kills the ambience, so to help make sure you never make that mistake, we’ve created a colour guide chart below.
As lighting designers we almost exclusively use 2700K light bulbs for most areas of the home. We find this is our ‘magic number’ - perfect for both practical work spaces and for inviting, relaxing interior lighting schemes.
Any ‘warmer’ on the scale we start to notice a yellow/orangey effect (great for some schemes wanting to recreate an almost candle-lit effect) and any cooler than 3500K and we start to see blue hues that can make a room feel cold and uninviting (great for office/work spaces though!)
And there you have it! Use our wattage chart to work out the brightness you’re looking for and then check our colour chart to make sure you’re getting the right colour temperature and you won’t go wrong!
