Today, reading is one of the most important and frequent learning tasks for children and is closely related to vision. If the reading light is not suitable, it will easily affect the reading experience and cause vision loss. How to choose the appropriate reading light brightness for children?

First of all, let's briefly popularize the units that will be involved when buying a reading light bulb.
For a long time, people have used "wattage (Watts)" to judge the brightness of light bulbs, but in recent years, the packaging of all light bulbs in Europe and the United States must put Lumens (Lumens), which reflects brightness, that is, the unit of luminous flux, at the forefront. This also means that wattage is no longer a measure of the illuminance of a bulb.
The reason for this is that, as a unit of power consumption, watts show how much energy a bulb product consumes, not how much light output it provides. That's why when buying any type of light, you should never just look at the amount of watts consumed, it only tells us how fast a light can consume power, not how much light it can produce.
Since a lumen is a unit of light that tells us the total amount of light a lamp emits, we can generalize: the more lumens, the brighter the light.
Key factors in lighting a reading area include the lumens of the reading light, and the distance between the books and the bulb. The best way to compare the brightness levels of two similar light types is also by their lumens. Usually, it's good to compare bulbs of the same type because they all focus light in the same way.

Lamps

A good lamp that focuses bright light directly on the book can successfully prevent eye strain while reading, and the best option is a desk lamp with a shade that directs the light downwards to make reading more enjoyable.

Light Distribution

As you use your eyes more, more light will be needed. According to incomplete statistics, the eyes of ordinary people need 1% more light when reading every year. In other words, a 10-year-old who only needs a 40-watt light bulb to read will need a 100-watt light bulb at the age of 60.

Just now we said that watts express the level of energy required to produce light, we should consider lumens, a new method of measuring the amount and brightness of light emitted by a bulb, which is more accurate than watts. Therefore, you need to determine enough lumens to pick the right bulb, with the following references:

- If you need a 40 watt bulb, you should look for 450 lumens
- If you need a 60 watt bulb, you should be looking for 800 lumens
- If you need a 75 watt bulb, you should look for 1100 lumens
- If you need a 100 watt bulb, you should look for 1600 lumens

But also be aware that too much light as well as not enough light can be a problem, the optimum lumen level for a desk lamp depends on its use, usually a 450 lumen (40 watt) bulb is good for some everyday purposes like writing and reading; 800-1100 lumens Already ready for delicate tasks like drawing.

Type of bulb

Among the different bulb types, it is most important to find the one that suits you.
The first was the Incandescent, which until the late 1990s was the classic standard choice in all homes, was affordable and provided a cozy warm light, and was also a great choice for children's reading lights, unfortunately they were very fragile, It is energy inefficient and has a short lifespan of only 700 to 1000 hours.
Halogen bulbs (Halogen) contain a small amount of halogen, which prevents the wire from degrading, which prolongs the service life of the bulb for at least 2500-3000 hours, and also provides high brightness and pleasant warm light.
Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) are energy-saving lamps that use low levels of energy to produce cool white light, are inexpensive, and have a lifespan of 7,000-10,000 hours.
Light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs, which quickly became the standard today, are energy-efficient and last over 50,000 hours, although they fade over time. It's worth mentioning that a 1 watt halogen lamp and a 1 watt LED etc don't produce the same amount of light, LED chips are more efficient and convert more energy into light than halogen lamps.