adequate lighting

[notaplumber1]

Please recommend minimum lighting wattage requirement for a room 30sqm, no hidden corners from a single light fitting in middle of ceiling.
tnx 4 advice

 

[seasickstevie]

It's not wattage you want, it's lumens.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

And lux.

 

[MarkBarl]

As that's quite a large room, from a single ceiling fitting, in old money, I would have thought perhaps a fitting with 3 x 60W bulbs. Incandescent 60W bulbs are about 800 Lumens. I love LED bulbs, much better than CFL in my opinion. I would suggest this as a suitable LED bulb (Depending on what cap you require I link to a bayonet as an example).

I would recommend that supplier from personal experience. I have no affiliation with them, but I have been really happy with the quality of the products and their service. Additionally, fill in a warranty form and post it off to them once you buy and you will get unlimited replacements if a bulb fails within 5 years.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

The type of room is important. What is aesthetically acceptable in a kitchen might not be OK in a living room.

 

[notaplumber1]

Tnx. Got bedroom and lounge this size plus two smaller bedrooms. Limitation is ceiling height is low. 2.4m.

 

[ericmark]

For my living room with compact fluorescent lamps which is about that size I needed more than the 3500 lumen from the 10 lamps which were 80W in total. Originally lit with 2 x 100W tungsten lamps which were replaced with 6 x 40W tungsten the twin 5 lamp fittings were installed with idea of using 10 x 8W CFL. However these were changed for 8 x 3W and 2 x 1.6W LED lamps which total 2400 lumen and really these are too bright for the room. Personally I think Philips incorrectly rated the lumen output of their CFL but it does mean one can neither use lumen or wattage it really is a suck it and see.

The colour of the room does matter. Specially the ceiling white is the best but any light colour will be better than dark colours. Assuming the room is for general use and with light ceiling and walls I would aim for around the 3000 lumen mark to start with for that size room.

This is why I don't like the lamps with built in LED's as if you get it wrong it costs a lot to change. With plug or screw in lamps if not enough or too much you can at least move the bulbs around the house and reduce or increase the light for that room.

At work I made a huge mistake. One building 25 foot to lights used low bay lighting which worked very well. In fact so well decided to replace the fluorescent tube lights in another building with 10 foot to lights with same low bay lights, but this was a complete failure. Lighting is rather complex and having the light emitting from a large area can be far better with low ceiling than same light coming from a small area we see this with the 2" spot lights where it can require 200W to light a room which a simple frosted bulb could have lit with 60W if only frosted bulbs were still allowed.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

we see this with the 2" spot lights where it can require 200W to light a room which a simple frosted bulb could have lit with 60W if only frosted bulbs were still allowed.

Yes, but the lighting industry colluded with the legislators to allow the former and ban the latter. You might think that was because there's far more profit in MR16 lamps than GLS, but I couldn't possibly comment.

 

[ericmark]

we see this with the 2" spot lights where it can require 200W to light a room which a simple frosted bulb could have lit with 60W if only frosted bulbs were still allowed.

Yes, but the lighting industry colluded with the legislators to allow the former and ban the latter. You might think that was because there's far more profit in MR16 lamps than GLS, but I couldn't possibly comment.

You just have.

To my mind there was an advantage using devices to both light and heat the home there was no real reason to ban them.