This Is How Many Lumens You Need For Outdoor Lighting To Look Good

Learn The Right Amount Of Brightness You Need To Light Your Outdoors In Colorado Springs
Different outdoor lighting used to brighten this yard at night

How many lumens you need for outdoor lighting changes depending on the light. The normal range is between 50 and 700 lumens.

Find out more below-

Watt’s A Lumen?

“See what I did there?” asks Melissa, waggling her eyebrows.

Josh tries to hide his smile at Melissa’s bad joke. “Bahahaaa, that’s great! Watt, lumen, deadly combination for a joke. But really, what’s this whole lumens thing about?”

Melissa pulls out her phone. “I don’t know a lot, but I do know lumen is a measurement for light bulbs. Something to do with LED lights. Speaking of LEDs I know LED vs other bulbs shows that LEDs are better.” She starts typing into Google to find answers.

“While you do that I’m going to skip ahead. I’ll look for how many lumens we need for outdoor lighting. This way we can get more done at once,” says Josh, pulling out his phone. The couple stands around in silence until they find the answers they’re looking for. They read and then swap phones to read the other information.

Here is what they find:

How Many Lumens For Outdoor Lighting

  • The widest range for how many lumens are needed for outdoor lighting is 12 to 1,300 
  • Wall lights need around 50 to 185 lumens
  • Lights for pathways and steps need about 100 lumens
  • General landscape lights work best with 50 to 300 lumens
  • Underwater lights work best between 200 and 400  lumens
  • Flood lights and motion sensor lights need around 700 lumens

These are just normal ranges. You can use more or fewer lumens depending on what look you’re going for.

Landscape lighting fixtures in and around a water feature

Lumens vs Watts

Lumens measure how bright a bulb is. Watt basically measures how much energy a bulb uses, or how much power. Lumens is more accurate because it’s easier to understand how dim or bright a bulb will be than how much energy it uses.

Graph showing the differences in energy efficiency and lifespan for LED vs other types of light bulbs

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“Ok, so as long as we stay in those ranges we should be able to create a really nice look for our home at night,” says Melissa. “Sounds like it!” agrees Josh. “Let’s see what else we can learn about outdoor lighting.”