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CFL and LED lightbulbs are sold as being "40/60/100 watt equivalent". They're designed and sold as replacements for a certain wattage of incandescent lamp.

I have some fixtures where I want a very bright bulb. Since CFLs and LEDs can get more light out of less wattage it seems to me that an actual 40W draw CFL or LED that would be significantly brighter than a 40W incandescent.

Does such a super-CFL or super-LED lamp exist?

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  • I think a CFL that actually draws 40W, would be equivalent to a 150W incandescent bulb (>2600 lumens). Not sure you'll find anything brighter, or even a CFL that bright for that matter.
    – Tester101
    Commented Apr 22, 2015 at 14:01
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    Just a note that because CFLs have a power factor of around 0.5, a 40W CFL will draw about twice as much current as a 40W incandescent bulb. Your fixture may not be rated to handle this.
    – Joel Keene
    Commented Apr 22, 2015 at 20:45
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    an LED that consumes 60 watts will blind you. that would be the equivalent to 600-700 watts that an incandescent light would produce.
    – SkipBerne
    Commented Mar 16, 2016 at 13:16
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    @SkipBerne - Yep, be aware what you ask for, you can get a permanent retinal burn off an 8 watt LED array. Wattage is no longer the true measure but lumens.
    – Fiasco Labs
    Commented Mar 16, 2016 at 16:19
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    Shop lumens, not watts.
    – Bryce
    Commented Dec 27, 2017 at 2:55

3 Answers 3

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Yes, you're looking for lights with a high lumen output. Since LED/CFL bulbs don't convert heat to light, the wattage isn't directly proportional to the light output. As an extreme example, consider that a 2 watt laser is powerful enough to burn some materials, or blind you!

What you'll likely find is that more expensive LED bulbs from lighting specialty stores are brighter than the cheap bulbs you find at your local home improvement store.

There are other characteristics of the bulb other than power which impact the perceived brightness - reflectors are a good example. A bulb with a wide spread will seem less bright (in a room) than a bulb with a narrow spread since the light is being diffused more.

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    All lamps have inefficiency and will produce heat. Incandescent, halogen, CFL, and LED bulbs convert 98%, 97%, 91%, 88% of their electric consumption into heat, respectively. An ideal (no heat) "60 watt" / 800 lumen bulb would consume only about 1 watt of electricity.
    – Hank
    Commented Apr 22, 2015 at 18:22
  • ...sorry I thought you said "LED/CFL bulbs don't create heat". My comment isn't really relevant in light of what you actually said!
    – Hank
    Commented Apr 22, 2015 at 18:26
  • I meant that they are not heating a filament to produce light...
    – Steven
    Commented Apr 22, 2015 at 18:37
  • A low-wattage laser can burn you because those the energy is focused into such a small area. I don't see how that's relevant to the wattage of LED/CFL bulbs at all.
    – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft
    Commented Apr 22, 2015 at 19:31
  • if you capture all the light AND heat from a 2-watt bulb and focus it to a small point it would burn, too
    – Skaperen
    Commented Apr 27, 2015 at 12:16
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Sure there are. Here's a 45-watter:

enter image description here

and that's what you get when you open the box:

enter image description here

They're not even specialty items (although that depends on where you live. I moved to Amsterdam a while ago and here I just can't find anything over 20W, except for the elongated T4/T5 tubes).

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The light output of a CFL is about three times that of an incandescent bulb with the same wattage, and the light output of an LED bulb is about six times that of an incandescent.

So a 40W CFL would be roughly equivalent to a 120W incandescent bulb (100s and 150s were much more common), and a 40W LED bulb would be roughly equivalent to a 240 Watt (300s existed as stage lighting, photography lights, and the like but would rarely be used at home except as outdoor flood lights).

That should help you know what you are looking for, if you really do want to find one for some reason. If you just want to know whether it exists: there's not much good reason it should, but there's no good reason it shouldn't.

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