You can find a table of the more common equivalents at the bottom of the page, which is a reasonably good guide to the likely brightness level of your bulbs (not all energy-saving bulbs give off quite the same light, but then neither did incandescents).

When energy-saving bulbs were first introduced, manufacturers initially dealt with this by printing the wattage the bulb was equivalent to on the packaging, e.g.

All of a sudden, the wattage has changed drastically while the brightness has stayed the same, leading to a good deal of confusion. Getting rid of confusionĮverything’s changed now though, with the decline of incandescent bulbs and the rise of energy-saving and LED bulbs. For years, everyone knew that 60 watts meant standard room lighting, 40 watts was a bit dingy, 100 watts was nice and bright for kitchens and bathrooms, and anything brighter than that was best left for surgeons and interrogators. And what’s a watt? Well it’s a measure of energy transfer (named after James Watt, the pioneer of steam engines), but that was always irrelevant. Not so very long ago, when incandescent bulbs ruled the roost, choosing the right light bulb based on brightness was incredibly simple, as it was all done in watts.

Watt v lumen