LED lighting lumens is a term used to describe the brightness of LED light bulbs. Consumers are used to the term watt but they dont apply in this case since LED lights are significantly more energy efficient. It is for this reason that they are set to replace the traditional incandescent light bulbs.
LED Lighting Lumens
LED stands for Light Emitting Diode which is a semiconductor light source, and a lumen is a measurement of light. A lumen is the way to measure how much light gets to what someone is trying to illuminate and is equal to one foot-candle (how bright the light is one foot away from the source) when it falls on one square foot of area. Comparing LED light bulbs solely on lumens is tricky since LED bulbs tend to make better use of their lumens in recessed fixtures.
Converting Candelas and Lumens
Although you cant directly convert candelas to lumens (or vice versa) since they measure different things, you can make an approximate comparison. Since lumens measure light output at the source and candelas measure the amount of light that falls on the surface, as the area of the surface increases, the number of candelas will decrease while the number of lumens will remain constant. To make the approximate comparison, find the LED beam width in degrees, then divide the candelas number by the cd/lim factor thats listed for that beam angle to obtain the LED lighting lumens.
Advantages of LED Lighting
There are many advantages of LED lighting over incandescent and compact fluorescent lights. LED´s are better at placing light in a specific direction and are particularly useful when installed in small areas that require focused light. On top of this is the fact that LED´s are incredibly resistant to damage, are cool to the touch, dont attract as many bugs, dont flicker and gradually fade out instead of burn out all of which is not the case with the traditional light bulbs. In addition to these advantages, LED lights emit a brighter clean light and come in a multitude of colors.
Cost Savings Using LED Lighting
Although the initial cost of purchasing LED lighting is higher, they will in fact cost much less over the long course of their life. The reason for this is that the bulbs often use at least 75% less energy than incandescent bulbs while still producing much more light. This is where the lumens come into play because while a regular incandescent bulb may produce approximately 11 lumens per watt, there are some LED´s that can produce upwards of 100 lumens per watt. This directly results in an LED producing more or the same amount of light as a regular incandescent light bulb while only using a fraction of the power.
Deciding what LED lighting lumens should be purchased when replacing standard incandescent or fluorescent bulbs can seem tricky, but really it all comes down to just how bright you would like the light to be. Since LED´s can emit a brilliant white light, for a small area, an LED with a low lumen rating would do the job well; while one for a room may need to have upwards of 600 lumens.
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