Interior Lighting Calculation

While designing your home, performing a lighting calculation will help you determine
how much light you need for each room and for various tasks. This page will teach you
how to calculate lighting levels.
It might seem tricky at first but luckily there are lighting tables available that list how
much light is required for various room types and tasks.

Lighting Calculation Terms

The lighting tables you'll be referencing will tell you how much light you need for each
room or task in either footcandles (imperial measurements) or lux (metric).
Let's first define a few lighting terms.
Candela: One candela is equivalent to the illumination from one standard candle.
For those working in the imperial system:
One footcandle is the amount of illumination on a surface created by a light source of
one candela that is a foot away from the surface.
In the metric system:
One lux is the amount of illumination on a surface created by a light source of one
candela that is a metre away from the surface.
When you purchase light bulbs there will generally be two numbers of interest on the
packaging. One is Watts which measures the power draw of the bulb. The other is
lumens.
For those using feet, one footcandle is equal to 1 lumen/square foot.
For those using metres, one lux is equal to 1 lumen/square metre.
So in order to calculate your lighting needs for a given room, you check an illumination
chart for the optimal number of footcandles or lux for a given task and then multiply by
the square footage (or metres) of the room to obtain the number of required lumens.

Below is a chart for basic tasks and room functions. Below the table you'll find an
example home lighting calculation for a kitchen.
Activity
Hallways
Entertaining
Dining
Easy reading
Bathroom
Kitchenbasic lighting
Kitchenfood prep
Difficult reading or writing
General workshop lighting
Fine or detailed work

Footcandles
5-7
10-20
10-20
20-50
20-50
20-50
50-100
50-100
50-100
100-200

Lux
55-75
110-215
110-215
215-540
215-540
215-540
540-1075
540-1075
540-1075
1075-2150

How to Calculate Lighting for a Kitchen

Note: The lighting calculation example below is calculated using the imperial system
(feet). If you are working in metres, simply exchange the footcandle numbers for the
appropriate lux numbers from the table and calculate your room area in square metres.
Let's do a lighting calculation for a 10 by 12 foot kitchen as an example. For our basic
general kitchen lighting, we know from the table above that we'll need 20-50
footcandles. For food preparation, we'll want more like 50 to 100 footcandles.
Let's start by calculating the area of the kitchen. By multiplying the length and width of
our kitchen together we get 10 feet X 12 feet = 120 square feet.
Now to calculate the required lumens for the kitchen we multiply the number of
footcandles (let's take the dimmest general lighting level of 20 footcandles first) by the
square footage. For this we'll need 20 footcandles X 120 square feet = 2400 lumens.
For the maximum foot prep level of 100 footcandles, the calculation would be 100
footcandles X 120 square feet = 12,000 lumens.
For compact fluorescent lights (CFL) the illuminance tends to be about 40 to 70 lumens
per Watt of power draw (incandescent lights are more like 10-17 lumens/Watt). For our
example let's use 20 Watt CFLs rated at 1200 lumens.

So for our lowest light requirement of 2400 lumens, the calculation would be:
2400 lumens / 1200 lumens per bulb = 2 bulbs
For our brightest light requirement of 12,000 lumens, the calculation would be:
12,000 lumens / 1200 lumens per bulb = 10 bulbs
That seems like a lot of lights but if you consider all the light possibilities for a kitchen:
dimmable recessed lights, some under cabinet lights, the light on the stove top vent
hood and a few track or hanging lights right above an island or prep counter, you could
reach that ten bulb level.

For some however, this level of 12,000 lumens may be simply too bright. For a more
personalized home lighting design, do a few quick calculations in your current home to
determine the light level in a given room. Compare the light level of that room to the
tasks shown in the table above. If you feel the light in that room is inadequate, bring in a
few extra lamps from other rooms until the light seems right. Add up the number of
lumens from all the bulbs in the room and then calculate the number of footcandles you
now have in that room. Compare this number to the chart above to get a feel where in
each range you prefer your lighting.
Keep in mind that any kind of shade over the light fixture, whether it is a lamp shade or a
colored glass pendant over the bulb will lower the number of lumens output for that bulb.
To achieve the variation in light level required between the general kitchen lighting level
and the food prep lighting level, you can group your lights on a few different switches.
Under-cabinet lights are often on a separate switch as are the lights in the stove vent
hood. You can also have any fixtures directly over an island or peninsula style counter on
their own switch.
Some or all lights can also be put on dimmer switches.