As a guide, you’ll want somewhere between 100 and 300 lux for living spaces in your home, but a brighter light around the 750 lux mark for kitchens or workbenches where you’ll potentially be working with sharp tools. Lux is so important that the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America has produced an entire handbook with a recommended list of lux levels for different requirements.Īll kinds of residential and commercial scenarios are covered. But lux is the measurement that tells you whether a room is bright enough. That doesn’t mean lumens aren’t important – they’re related, as you will learn in a second. When you’re planning your lighting at home or work, you don’t plan for how bright the bulb is but how much it illuminates your room. Lux matters because it tells you how effective a light source is. Simply, foot candles and lux do the same job, but one is imperial (1 foot candle = 1 lumen per square foot) while one is metric (1 lux = 1 lumen per square meter). It’s worth noting at this point that you may also have heard of foot candles. You’re removing the light dissipation, so the light is more concentrated onto the wall – meaning the lumens are the same, but the lux is now higher. See how the brightness has increased on the wall? Now return to being one meter away, but shine the light through a cardboard tube. But the light is being spread further around the room, and so the surface is benefiting less. See how the same torchlight is now much dimmer? The bulb hasn’t got any dimmer. Sit one meter away from the wall and shine the light onto it. Either mark up space on a wall or use a part of a wall as a focal point. You can recreate this test with a torch or your smartphone. One lux is equivalent to one lumen of brightness per square meter – so over a space of one meter squared, a surface with one lux is as bright as a bulb giving off one lumen at point-blank range. Lux is a measurement of light on a surface – how effectively is it being lit? No matter where you use that bulb, it’ll be the same brightness. Lumens are how you measure the brightness of a bulb. That’s the easiest way to explain the difference between lumens and lux. The bulb itself is creating the same amount of light – but the impact of that light on the environment depends on many other factors. Place that same lightbulb in a fitting inside a huge office building, and it isn’t going to do much at all. If you buy a light bulb, place it in a lamp and then place that lamp in a small box, it’s going to create a lot of light in a small space.
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