Flood vs Throw: How to Choose a Weapon Light
Two numbers decide a weapon light: lumens (total output — flood) and candela (peak intensity — throw). Which one you chase depends entirely on how far you need to see — and getting it backwards leaves you blinded in a hallway or blind at 100 yards.
Updated
The short answer
Choose flood (lumens)
Your fights are close — a carry gun, home defense, a CQB carbine. You want to light a room and ID a threat fast, with no hot beam glaring back off the walls. Chase lumens; keep candela moderate.
Choose throw (candela)
Your shots are at distance — predator or hog hunting, rural patrol, an open-country carbine. You need to ID a target at 100+ yards. Chase candela; raw lumens matter less than reach.
Lumens vs. candela — the number that actually matters
Lumens are total output — how much light the emitter makes. Candela are how hard that light is focused into a hotspot, which sets how far it reaches. Two 1,000-lumen lights can throw wildly differently: a floody one spreads it across a room; a thrower concentrates it into a beam that IDs a target at 200 yards.
The trap is candela indoors: a hot thrower bounces off light-colored hallway walls and washes out your own vision. So the right answer tracks distance — flood for close and indoors, throw for open ground— which is exactly how each gun's page grades the lights that fit it.
Flood vs throw, at a glance
| Flood (lumens) | Throw (candela) | |
|---|---|---|
| Measured in | Lumens — total light output | Candela — peak beam intensity |
| Beam shape | Wide, even — fills a space | Tight hotspot — concentrates the light |
| Indoors / CQB | Ideal — lights the whole room | Too much — washes off walls, hurts your own eyes |
| At distance | Falls off fast past ~50 yards | Holds a usable hotspot far out |
| Best on | Carry & home-defense pistols | Patrol & predator carbines |
Carry & EDC pistols
Small, floody, holsterable — enough light to ID inside a house, in a body that doesn't fight your carry rig.
Streamlight TLR-7 Sub
500 lm · 5,000 cd · flood · ~141 m throw · strobe
500 lumens small enough to ride a Glock 43X, Hellcat, or P365 without printing — the answer when the gun is the carry priority.
Streamlight TLR-7 A
500 lm · 5,000 cd · flood · ~141 m throw · strobe
The compact-carry standard: 500 lm of even flood with ambidextrous paddles, sized for a duty-carry pistol you actually holster.
Home-defense pistols
More output, beam still wide: own the room, no glare off the walls.
Streamlight TLR-1 HL-X
1,000 lm · 15,000 cd · flood · ~245 m throw · strobe
1,000 lm with a balanced 15,000 cd beam — enough flood to own a hallway without the wall-glare a hot thrower bounces back at you. The home-defense default.
SureFire X300U-A
1,000 lm · 11,300 cd · flood · ~213 m throw
Bolted to more issued pistols than anything else — 1,000 lm, bombproof, and a beam tuned for fast indoor ID rather than reach.
Patrol & duty carbines
A balanced scout beam — across-the-room to about 100 yards — on an M-LOK or 1913 rail.
SureFire M600U Scout
1,000 lm · 11,300 cd · flood · ~213 m throw
The scout light everyone benchmarks against — 1,000 lm, a beam balanced from across-the-room to ~100 yards, and the rail footprint half the industry copies.
Streamlight ProTac Rail Mount HL-X
1,000 lm · 50,000 cd · balanced · ~447 m throw · strobe
1,000 lm and 50,000 cd of real reach for a fraction of the SureFire price, with the pressure switch in the box — the value patrol pick.
Long-range & predator
High candela to put a usable hotspot on a target at 150–300 yards, where flood disappears.
Modlite OKW v2
1,300 lm · 95,000 cd · throw · ~616 m throw
A tight 95,000 cd hotspot that puts usable light on a coyote at 200+ yards — the tool for open ground, where a floody light just falls off into the dark.
Cloud Defensive REIN 3.0
1,250 lm · 100,000 cd · throw · ~632 m throw
100,000 cd of throw with enough spill to still work up close — the no-compromise pick when the budget isn't the constraint.
SureFire M340DFT Turbo Scout Pro
650 lm · 95,000 cd · throw · ~616 m throw
95,000 cd of turbo throw in a single-cell mini body — the thrower for a lightweight carbine that still has to reach out.
IR (for night vision)
White + infrared in one head — only worth it if you're running a night-vision device.
SureFire M640V Vampire
350 lm · 12,750 cd · balanced · ~226 m throw · IR
Twist the bezel from 350 lm white to a 120 mW infrared flood your night vision sees and the naked eye can't — one light for both shifts. Only worth it if you run NV.
Common questions
How many lumens do I need for a weapon light?
For a carry or home-defense pistol, 300–1,000 lumens is plenty — past that, beam shape and candela (throw) matter more than raw lumens. A patrol or hunting carbine wants roughly 500–1,500 lumens paired with high candela for reach. More lumens isn't automatically better; an over-bright light indoors just reflects back at you.
What's the difference between lumens and candela?
Lumens measure total light output — how much flood. Candela measure peak beam intensity — how far it throws. A 1,000-lumen flood light and a 1,000-lumen thrower emit the same total light, but the thrower concentrates it into a tight hotspot that reaches much farther (beam distance ≈ the square root of candela ÷ 0.25, in meters).
Is flood or throw better for home defense?
Flood. Indoors you want to light the whole room and ID a threat instantly — and a high-candela thrower works against you, glaring off light-colored walls and wrecking your own night vision. Keep candela moderate (roughly under 50,000) and prioritize a wide, even beam for a home-defense gun.
Do I need an infrared (IR) weapon light?
Only if you run night vision. An IR illuminator (like SureFire's Vampire series) floods the area with infrared light your NV device sees but the naked eye can't. For everyone shooting with their eyes, it's wasted money — stick to white light.
Building a specific gun?
Every gun's page grades the weapon lights that fit it — flagging the ones whose beam suits that gun's job, not just whether they bolt on. Browse all weapon lights or start from your firearm →
Lumens and candela are manufacturer FL-1 figures; beam distance is derived from candela. Prices are MSRP unless a live offer is shown. We may earn a commission on purchases through our links.