If you ever had difficulty figuring our how many light bulbs or how much lighting, outdoor lighting, ceiling lights, chandeliers, and other lighting sources it would take to light up an area such as your bedroom, kitchen, or patio, have no worries. There’s a neat and simple formula to calculate the amount of light or watts needed to properly lit up a given space.

Simply multiply the area’s square footage by 1.5.  This is the width and the length of the space, measured in feet, multiplied by 1.5.  The resulting number would be the amount of watts needed to light up a room properly.

How to figure out lighting for an area

Width x Length x 1.5 = Watts needed to properly light up a room.

For example, let’s figure out how much lighting a 15ft. by 10 ft. kitchen would need.

15 (width) x 10 (height) x 1.5 =  225 watts.

Therefore, the kitchen would need 225 watts of lighting in order to be properly lit.

For areas that require more lighting such as study rooms with those fancy table lamps, multiply the area’s square footage by 2.5 rather than 1.5.