Lumens are the amount of light a lamp puts out. For a living room, work with a rule of thumb of roughly 100 to 150 lumens per square meter, for a kitchen or bathroom 200 to 300, and more for a worktop. Watts tell you nothing since LED came along: look at lumens.
Why watts send you the wrong way
With incandescent bulbs, consumption tracked light output neatly, so everyone shopped on watts. With LED that link is gone. You can see it straight away in our catalog: the Marlo uses 5 watts for 350 lumens, while the Lyvo gets 500 lumens out of the same 5 watts. Same consumption, almost half as much light again.
Look only at watts and you are shopping in the dark. The number that counts is listed in our specifications as light output.
What our spots give each
The recessed spotlights in the range sit roughly between 320 and 700 lumens:
- Vigo — 320 lm at 5 watts
- Marlo — 350 lm at 5 watts
- Quaro — 400 lm at 6 watts
- Lesto — up to 400 lm, with a switch between 4 and 6 watts
- Ferro — 600 lm at 6 watts
- Lyvo and Warmo — 500 lm at 5 watts, 700 lm at 7 watts
That difference of more than a factor of two means something very practical: with Lyvos on the high setting you need about half as many spots for the same room as you would with Vigos.
From square meters to a number of spots
Take a living room of 30 m². With the rule of thumb of 100 to 150 lumens per square meter you arrive at 3,000 to 4,500 lumens in total. Divide that by the light output per spot:
- With the Ferro (600 lm): 5 to 8 spots
- With the Quaro (400 lm): 8 to 11 spots
- With the Vigo (320 lm): 9 to 14 spots
For a kitchen of 12 m² at 200 to 300 lumens per square meter you get 2,400 to 3,600 lumens. That is 4 to 6 Ferros, or 6 to 9 Quaros.
These are guide figures, not laws. A room with a dark floor and a wooden ceiling swallows light; a white space with plenty of reflective surface throws it back. If you are torn between two numbers, take the higher one and add a dimmer — too much light can be turned down, too little cannot.
Do not count ceiling spots alone
The rule of thumb is about the total in the room, not about your ceiling alone. A reading lamp, a pendant above the table and wall lights all count. In practice it works better to aim your ceiling spots at about two thirds of the total and fill in the rest with separate fixtures. That gives a calmer result than a ceiling full of spots all lighting everything equally hard.
Lumens and light color are two different things
A 400-lumen spot at 2700K feels softer than the same 400 lumens at 4000K, even though the same amount of light comes out. Your eyes perceive warm light as less bright. So work out your lumens first, and only then choose your color temperature. With spots that have a CCT switch, such as the Lesto and the Quaro, you can still make that choice during installation.
If you want to work out the number of spots per room in more detail, see How many recessed spotlights do you need per room? or the lighting guide.
How many lumens is an old 60-watt bulb?
About 700 lumens. Our Lyvo and Warmo reach that on the high setting at 7 watts.
Can you add lumens together?
For a rough calculation, yes: eight spots of 400 lumens give 3,200 lumens together. How that light is spread through the room is not something the number tells you.
Is more lumens always better?
No. Too much light in a living room feels unwelcoming. Better to choose generously and add a dimmer so you can turn it back down.