When planning warehouse lighting, we may want to know how bright the lighting should be. In fact, different types of warehouses require different levels of brightness, i.e. lux levels. It is important to have adequate lighting levels in the storehouse because it ensures the safety of workers and we can have a better navigation.
How many lux do we need to light up a warehouse?
Warehouse lighting is not the brighter the better. Lighting should be bright enough to provide enough lumens to improve worker visibility, but not so bright as to be harsh on the eyes. The recommended lux level for a typical warehouse area is about 175 to 300 lux. For storage areas, we need approximately 100 to 200 lux; and for management offices, 200 to 300 lux.
| Warehouse area | Brightness requirement |
| Open area of warehouse | 175 to 300 lux |
| Storage area | 100 to 200 lux |
| Management office | 200 to 300 lux |
How to measure the brightness in the warehouse?
There are many ways to measure the brightness of a warehouse. One of the easiest ways is to use a lux meter. We can place the illuminance meter on the floor and have the sensor facing up. The reading will be the lux value. We can then compare this reading to different warehouse lighting brightness standards.
If we don’t have a lux meter, we can download the smartphone app “Lux Meter”. It uses the front camera as a sensor to record lux values. Thus, we can have a very quick overview of the brightness of the warehouse lighting. If the warehouse is too dark, we can replace it with new lights of higher lumens or add some lights to the ceiling. If you would like to get a free lighting design for any type of warehouse, including cold storage, ship storage, distribution centers, etc., please feel free to contact us.
When determining the brightness of warehouse lighting equipment, look at lumens rather than watts
Wattage is the total power consumption of the lighting fixture, such as light output and heat output, while lumens indicate the amount of visible light produced in the warehouse area. When comparing different warehouse lighting fixtures, we can’t just look at the wattage of the lamp, this is because sometimes it can be misleading.
A 1000W metal halide lamp can only produce the equivalent of a 300W LED lamp. This is because much of the energy in a metal halide lamp is used for heat output, so much of the energy (wattage) is wasted instead of producing visible light.
Nevertheless, lumens can provide a more concrete idea of the light emitted. In theory, two lamps with the same lumen output will provide the same brightness for a warehouse. For example, an HID lamp and an LED lamp with 15,000 lumens will give more or less the same brightness. However, because HID is less energy efficient, it will have a higher wattage.
