How Many Led Downlights per Room Calculator

Lighting is an essential aspect of any room, and LED downlights have become increasingly popular due to their energy efficiency, long lifespan, and versatility. The design of the LED downlight is more beautiful and light. It can maintain the overall unity and perfection of the architectural decoration during installation without destroying the setting of the lamp. The light source is hidden inside the architectural decoration. LED light is not exposed, no glare, and the human visual effect is soft and uniform. And there are 5-50W recessed and surfaced downlights for your choice.

Due to all the advantages of LED downlights, it is widely used in indoor lighting like shopping malls, offices, factories, hospitals, hotels, homes, coffee shops, etc.

However, determining the number of LED downlights required for a room can be challenging, as it depends on various factors such as room size, ceiling height, and desired brightness. the purpose of the room, the color of the walls, and the type of lighting you choose…

In this blog, we will provide a comprehensive guide on how many LED downlights per room calculator.

Step 1: Determine the Room Area

The first step in calculating the number of LED downlights required for a room is to determine the room’s area. Measure the length and width of the room and multiply them to get the room’s total area in square feet. For example, if a room measures 12 feet by 15 feet, the total area would be 180 square feet.

Step 2:Determine the lumen of the room needed

The purpose of the room will determine the recommended level of brightness in lumens. For example, a living room typically requires 1,500-3,000 lumens, while a bedroom may only need 800-1,500 lumens. In general, the living room needs 1W of LED lights per square meter, the bedroom needs 0.8W of LED lights per square meter, the kitchen needs 1.1W of LED lights per square meter, the bathroom needs 0.9W of LED lights per square meter, and the study room needs 2W of LED lights per square meter. For LED lights, the lumen is about 100lm/W.

Step 3:Determine the height of the ceiling

If the ceiling is higher than 8 feet, you may need to add more lumens to compensate for the additional height.

Step 4:Determine the color of the walls

Darker-colored walls absorb more light, while lighter-colored walls reflect more light. If your walls are a darker color, you may need to add more lumens to compensate.

Once you have determined the above factors, you can use the following formula to calculate the number of lights required for your room:

Lights number = (Square footage of the room x Recommended level of brightness in lumens) ÷ (Height of the ceiling x Wall color factor x Lighting factor)÷100lm/w÷lamp power Watt

The wall color factor and lighting factor are both subjective and depend on your specific situation. As a general rule, you can use a wall color factor of 0.7 for darker walls and 1.0 for lighter walls, and a lighting factor of 1.0 for LED lights

Remember that this is just a guideline, and the actual number of lights you need may vary depending on your personal preferences and specific situation.

How many downlights do I need? And How far apart should downlights be? If you still do not clear, please click this caculator, it is easy to use.

Take the home lighting as an example, we listed a table, different sizes of the room area for different power of LED lights, easy to understand

Living room lighting needs to be bright: the living room generally takes for a relatively large area in the whole house, but also the main activity area, so to make it bright enough, wattage requirements are relatively high. At the same time, a bright and transparent lighting environment will also make the living room look more atmospheric. Therefore, we generally recommend that the living room lighting wattage selection in 60-450w.

Bedroom lighting should be soft and warm: the bedroom is only used for sleeping and resting, so it needs soft light, not harsh, and no glare. Therefore, we usually do not recommend that the bedroom lighting be too bright. Depending on the area, the light source wattage selection between 13-50w is OK.

Kitchen lighting should be bright enough: In a way, kitchen lighting actually belongs to the operational lighting. However, the difference is that the kitchen lighting operation area is relatively small, requiring relatively concentrated light. Subtle movements like chopping and washing vegetables must be precisely lit to avoid unnecessary unhygienic and even dangerous situations. We recommend that the kitchen’s local work lighting range from 8-38w

Elderly room lighting should be brighter: due to the weakness of the elderly vision, the same lamps and lanterns, the elderly feel less than young people.

Therefore, if you want to let the elderly feel the normal brightness, you need to increase the wattage of lamps

So,the young people’s bedroom light source with 13-50w is enough, but the elderly room to 25-100w.

Children’s room lighting should be soft but bright enough: contrary to the elderly, children’s retina development is not yet sound, so too bright light will come to negative stimulation of glasses. Therefore, the light in the children’s room does not have to be too bright, or even can be pressed darker does not matter. Usually, we will choose the light source of children’s room lamps in a range of 13-50w

The recommendations in the table are only recommendations, and just to be relatively reasonable. We also need to choose the light source according to your family habits, some people like brighter, some people just like a little darker, as long as it is not too far, there is no problem, you do not need to be too serious.

Now we know how many downlights per room, but someone will ask, what is the downlights distance from wall? Normally it is 15-20cm.

Conclusion: lighting design is not the selection of lights, it is a technical and artistic work, if you really do not have the time and professionalism to DIY lighting design, you might as well find a lighting designer!