Lighting – the difference between GU10 and GU10+C

There are a couple terms involved that all have specific meanings:

• Watts: the amount of electricity used by the bulb (a.k.a. "power")
• Lumens: the amount of visible light the bulb produces (a.k.a. "luminosity")
• Equivalent watts: an approximate incandescent bulb wattage that outputs a similar amount of light.
• Luminous efficiency: the amount of light put out by the bulb per watt. Higher means better efficiency.

There's not a direct relationship between watts and lumens, but you can look at the luminous efficiency to compare bulbs. Wikipedia lists values for common household bulb types:

• Incandescent bulb: 12-18 lumens / watt
• Halogen incandescent: 24 lumens / watt
• Compact fluorescent: 45-75 lumens / watt
• LED: 60-100+ lumens / watt

The LED you list has an efficiency of 28 lumens / watt, which is pretty poor for an LED. LEDs have been increasing in their efficiency; maybe it's an older model? Your CFL is 63 lumens / watt, which is pretty good for a CFL.

Compare those to the current gold standard for mass-market LED bulbs, Philips' L-prize LED, which puts out 940 lumens using 10 watts, or 94 lumens / watt.

You're also seeing the problem with "equivalent watts", which is kind of an unhelpful metric. I don't know if there's any regulation on what manufacturers can claim as the incandescent equivalent, but I've seen bulbs as low as 700 lumens and as high as 950 lumens all claim to be "60 watt equivalent". Even among incandescents there's a range of light output for a specific wattage. The most reliable way to look at brightness is the "lumens" rating. If you're trying to match the brightness of an existing bulb, try to look it up online to find the lumens.

As put in the comments, you should never put a switch in the neutral of a light.

Further, I am going to assume you are in a place where they use the wire colours as follows, because that seems the case in your drawing (I don't know all the world-wide colour schemes, but the most famous one that fits you image is this one I think):

• Brown = Phase ( = hot )
• Blue = Neutral
• Green/Yellow = Earth
• Black = Switched Phase ( = hot after a switch )

EDIT: Due to John's comment I add here, that apparently in the UK the switched wire is normally neutral colour (blue here), but with a live-colour (brown here) sleeve at each end. The remaining story most likely stays the same, with that substituted for black in the remainder.

As you can see in my list, there's a special, dedicated colour for switched wires, this is true in almost all colour schemes. In most countries dozens of pages of code can be paraphrased with:

You are not up to code if you do any of the following:

• Use different coloured wires for the same signal (as you do in your drawing: Your main light gets brown, where the same wire is blue coming from the switch)
• Use a safer colour for a less safe signal (i.e. Blue for something that is switched or black for something that is always phase)
• Use the earth colour for anything other than earth
• Use the neutral colour for anything other than neutral
• Use the phase colour for anything other than phase
• Combine low voltage DC or AC, that's assumed isolated and safe, in the same distribution channels as high voltage AC.
• Put more than X wires in a tube of size Y (X and Y differ between approval collectives and as such continents)

(often these codes are as redundant as the list above, I promise)

So, if you live in a area where my wire colour assumptions are correct, you will need to do the following to be up to the latest version of code (here in NL, for example there was a transitionary period also including Red and White as standard colours, but this has well and truly ended for new installations):

1. Make all the wires connected directly to the phase brown.
2. Make all the wires directly connected to the neutral blue.
3. Make sure the switches are all connected to the phase (with brown wires).
4. Use black wires (this is where my assumption comes in) going from the switches to the lights
5. connect the other sides of the lights to the neutral (with blue wires).

This makes you up to code, and as a bonus (partly why the code is there) you can at any point in time quickly check whether all is right, because you know which wire comes from where and connects to what and no one colour ever connects to another.