What's the difference between efficacy and efficiency of a luminaire?

What's the difference between efficacy and efficiency of a luminaire?

When searching for a new LED fixture, there are two particular terms that might seem similar but are very different things, LED efficacy and luminaire efficacy.

LED efficacy measures how efficiently a LED chip performs. This is the highest statistic in most LED-based lighting solutions, as LED circuits have been shown in laboratories to produce more than 200% LED efficacy by making use of subatomic vibrations, which allows to produce more light than electricity that they consume.

Luminaire efficacy refers to how efficient the entire lighting fixture is. It measures the efficiency ratio of the total amount of lumens output by the luminaire to the amount of electricity required to power the light fixture. This factors in everything, which includes integrated LEDs and any other electronic devices that may have a lower efficiency than the LED chip itself.

The distinct difference between these two measurements is that one measures only the LED while the other measures the entire fixture. This means that luminaire efficacy will be more important to you when comparing different lighting solutions.

Back to blog

Leave a comment