40 watt or lower

[gpglinka]

If a light fixture says only use 40 watt bulb or lower does refer to old incandescent? New LED bulb that is 60 watt light equivalent is only 8 watts.

 

[Sparky617]

You can use a 60 watt equivalent LED. The recommendation was due to the heat generated by the incandescent bulb. LEDs don't produce much heat.

 

[bud16415]

Watts are watts and I suspect the equivalence spec will be getting dropped and replaced by lumens. That’s really what people want to know. They want to know how much light is put out and how much power to run it.

 

[Guzzle]

This relates to how well the light fixture dissipates the heat generated by 40w or 60w incand bulbs.

I've read where LEDs put out 4x the lumens output vs an incand's lumens output.
Your ratio is 7.5:1 so maybe your LED is very efficient or the maker picked a test method that makes it look good.

A recent patent for an LED with many pages of text & drawings does not once claim a luminous efficiency, lumens per watt, so the vendors can claim whatever they want.
Who's going to check?

 

[JoeD]

I means 40 watts. The LED is 8 watts.
The equivalent rating is just a fake rating for reference to light output, lumens. It is not electrically relevant.