Bulb wattage for chandelier light?

[bronzea5]

I have a question about bulb suitability for a chandelier ceiling light.

The chandelier uses 3 candle type bulbs. It says on the chandelier Max 40W.

However, now that bulbs are LED the wattage is different to the older type of bulbs. i.e a 25-watt LED bulb is similar wattage to a higher wattage bulb previously.

Would 40-watt LED bulbs be suitable to use in the chandelier or would the wattage be too high?

 

[AdrianUK]

I'm not sure anybody makes a 40W LED in a candle lamp format.

120W of LED would be 'worth' around 800W of 'old' filament lamp (in round terms of 15W LED = ~100W incandescent)

Or do you mean LED equivalent of the 40W filament - that would be more like a 5W LED candle.

Found this table on the net....

 

[ETAF]

much to high
5.5W is approx the equivalent to a 40W

i replaced all the candle bulbs in the house - we have 4 double wall lights in lounge, 1 double in dining room and in the hall 2 sets of 3

seem to work well , i actually purchased Philips , as i found a few of the other brands i have purchased only last a short while - approx a year or so
The philips have been in about 4 years now

 

[JohnW2]

The chandelier uses 3 candle type bulbs. It says on the chandelier Max 40W. However, now that bulbs are LED the wattage is different to the older type of bulbs. i.e a 25-watt LED bulb is similar wattage to a higher wattage bulb previously. Would 40-watt LED bulbs be suitable to use in the chandelier or would the wattage be too high?

As has been implied, far, far 'too high' for LEDs.

I use 2W or 3W LED candle bulbs in my 3-bulb and 5-bulb 'chandelier-like fittings'.

Kind Regards, John

 

[SFK]

If you are saying, 3W LEDs are equivalent to 40W incandescent bulbs (which is about true). And you are worried that 3 x 40W (equivalent) is greater than the 40W max label. Then please ignore that and simply keep the actual LED wattage below the 40W (which shoul be easy as you should be using say 3 to 5W led bulbs).

Sfk

 

[AdrianUK]

Those old wattage ratings were based on the heat produced by a filament lamp.

Of the 40W of energy that went into the lamp, probably around 38W came out as heat & only 2W as light.

 

[ericmark]

My living room had a single BA22d fitting, and to get over a 100 watt tungsten although not impossible unlikely to find in normal outlets.

Moving to LED went for 8 x E14 bulbs, and to look reasonable need to be candle design, 6 watt seems around max size available. However not enough light, so supplement it with three 22 watt smart cabinet lights, I can turn these down, but in reality I am still using 100 watt with LED there has been no drop in power.

As to equivalent wattage it is clearly some fictional figure as I noted a 22 watt 5 foot LED replacement for a 58 watt fluorescent said something like 120 watt, even when the output was around a third of the output of the fluorescent it replaced. And it could not have replaced a tungsten, they don't fit in fluoscent lamps.

So one can take the equivalent with a pinch of salt.

 

[JohnW2]

My living room had a single BA22d fitting, and to get over a 100 watt tungsten although not impossible unlikely to find in normal outlets. .... Moving to LED went for 8 x E14 bulbs, and to look reasonable need to be candle design, 6 watt seems around max size available. However not enough light, so supplement it with three 22 watt smart cabinet lights, I can turn these down, but in reality I am still using 100 watt with LED there has been no drop in power.

I don't know how much light you 'need', but I use no more than about half that amount of LED lighting in any of my rooms, even the largest. What is probably the largest (I'd guess about 8m x 4.5m) has only 17 x 3W candle LEDs, so 51W. Some of the smaller rooms have only 3 x 3W or 5 x 3W LEDs.

And what on earth are these "22W smart cabinet lights"? Are they so 'smart' that they emit far less light than one would expect of a 22W LED, and hence are suitable for use in cabinets? !

Kind Regards, John

 

[SUNRAY]

I have a chandelier and 3 wall lights in lounge which state 40W max golfball bulbs. We used 25W golfballs for a while but realising the life was far too short due to over heating switched to 25W candle and for years worked well. 2 wall lights had been changed to CFL at failure. During decoration changed the lot to 3W candle LED, within days changed wall lights back due to light level, However looking at the combination, none of them appear to be much different in brightness, surface illumination (ie reading book/remote control etc) was well down.
Chandelier bulbs changed back due to very short life.

The notion of 10x is well out in my opinion.

Having criticised I'll say a local hall changed 4x 4ft fluo fittings to LED panels, table/floor illumination is very good but walls are not, so overall effect looks dingy.

 

[JohnW2]

I have a chandelier and 3 wall lights in lounge ..... During decoration changed the lot to 3W candle LED, within days changed wall lights back due to light level, However looking at the combination, none of them appear to be much different in brightness, surface illumination (ie reading book/remote control etc) was well down. Chandelier bulbs changed back due to very short life.

If nothing else, I suppose this demonstrates that experiences, perceptions and probably expectations all vary quite a bit.

At a quick rough count, I now have at least 45 candle LEDs (probably all 3W), which have replaced original 25W incandescents. In ll cases, the illumination they produce is adequate, very similar to that with the incandcents, and lifespan has been extremely good.

Similarly, I have at least 20 x 5W golfball LEDs, replacing original 40W incandescents. Again, illumination has been adequate/similar and lifespam very good.

Finally, most of the relatively few pendants here now have 12W LEDs, replacing original 100W incandescents - yet again with similar experiences

The notion of 10x is well out in my opinion.

In terms of my personal experience, not really "well out" but I would say that "about 8x" would probably be more realistic (25/3W =, 8.3x, 40/5W = 8.0x, 100/12W = 8.3x ).

Kind Regards, John

 

[ericmark]

And what on earth are these "22W smart cabinet lights"? Are they so 'smart' that they emit far less light than one would expect of a 22W LED, and hence are suitable for use in cabinets? !

Oh yes well below 22 watt at lowest setting, in fact just looked and outer two rated 17 watt inner one is 22 watt although primary to light the ornaments, turned to white and set high, they light the room well.

 

[JohnW2]

Oh yes well below 22 watt at lowest setting, in fact just looked and outer two rated 17 watt inner one is 22 watt although primary to light the ornaments, turned to white and set high, they light the room well.

Fair enough I must say that I would have thought that 2W, let alone 22W, would be far too much light to illuminate ornamets from a few inches away!!

I also have to say that I don't think I've ever used an LED greater than 12W indoors, and only 15-18W (PAR38) floods outdoors!

Kind Regards, John

 

[RandomGrinch]

Fair enough I must say that I would have thought that 2W, let alone 22W, would be far too much light to illuminate ornamets from a few inches away!!

...although if they are RGB strips, their efficiency producing 'white' light is significantly reduced, over an RGBW strip.

 

[JohnW2]

...although if they are RGB strips, their efficiency producing 'white' light is significantly reduced, over an RGBW strip.

Undoubtedly, but anything remotely approaching 22W of any sort of LED sounds (to me) to be an awful lot to illuminate things just a few inches away - but maybe I haven't 'lived'

Kind Regards, John

 

[ericmark]

...although if they are RGB strips, their efficiency producing 'white' light is significantly reduced, over an RGBW strip.

Not really looked at the TCP ones, but the Livarno has three sets of LED's, one colour, one low temperature white and one high temperature white. So when on white light the colour LED's are not lit, and as you adjust the colour temperature of the white light one set dims down and the other set goes brighter.

The strip can produce way over the rated 22 watt, but the controller will not allow both the low and high temperature LED to be fully powered together. It is likely the same with bulbs, but the defuser plastic over the LED's does not let you see what is there. This is a GU10 I ripped open and it seems to show the three chips in the same way as with the strip lamp. The control circuits seem quite complex which may explain why I have more failures with smart bulbs than standard bulbs. However the old idea of a dimming switch no longer works, as when you dim an LED the colour temperature remains static, so to get the ambiance it needs to be a smart bulb so you can also change the colour when dimming.

It seems we have come to the end of the digital age where things had two states on or off, and have moved into the analogue age where we can adjust brightness of lights, and output of boilers, and input of radiators gradually rather than using a mark/space ratio.

My living room I feel was never bright enough from the day the house was built, it was far too big of a room for a single pendent light, the chandelier helps, the ceiling mouldings means hard to fit lighting track, and the 8 bulbs really means it drops too low, so only way is standard lamps, mainly with up lighters, or table lamps, or display cabinet lights, it has been a problem lighting the house with sheet flooring so can't lift floor boards to wire in new.