Calculating The Light Needed For Each Room
Posted by Gavin Martin on Thu, Mar 18, 2010
Ever wonder how much lighting you need to properly light up a room in your home? The formula for calculating the proper amount of light you should have in each room of your home is as follows.
- Multiply the length of the room times the width of the room (in feet) to get the square footage. A 10ft x 10ft room would be 100 sq ft. Then multiply that number times 1.5. This number gives you the amount of wattage* needed to light the room properly for general illumination purposes. In this example that would be 150 watts. This could be one ceiling fixture with say 2 - 75 watt bulbs.
- For Task Lighting in areas where stronger light is needed (such as a kitchen island), multiply the area's square footage by 2.5 rather than 1.5 to find the needed wattage*.
*Wattage is based on incandescent (standard) bulbs.
