Best Lantern for a Power Outage: 5 Picks and a Room-by-Room Plan

Quick answer: The best lantern for a power outage, for most homes, is the Goal Zero Lighthouse 600. It puts out up to 600 lumens, enough to cook and eat by, and it recharges three ways: USB, a Goal Zero solar panel, or a built-in hand crank. The plan I’d build around it is simple: one bright lantern for the room where everyone gathers, a small solar lantern in each bedroom, and one battery-operated lantern as a backup that never needs sun.

This guide is about lighting a home through a blackout, not a campsite. That changes what matters. You need light that’s safe to leave on indoors overnight, lasts through 10 to 14 hours of winter darkness, and can be recharged on day three when the grid is still down.

I’m a medic and a certified first aid instructor. The outage injuries I worry about are falls on dark stairs, burns from candles, and carbon monoxide from fuel-burning lights and heaters, so every pick below is a battery-powered LED lantern. My picks are based on the makers’ published specs and on what a home outage demands.

Reader-supported: I may earn a commission if you buy through links on this page, at no extra cost to you. Disclosure.

Power Outage Lanterns Compared

Here’s how the five picks stack up. Prices were checked on the sellers’ sites in October 2026 and change often.

The 5 Best Lanterns for a Power Outage

1. Goal Zero Lighthouse 600: Best Overall

Pick this if you need one lantern bright enough to cook, read and play cards by in the main room, with a way to recharge it that doesn’t depend on the weather.
Skip this if you only need a light to walk to the bathroom. A Nova or Crush Light does that for a fraction of the price.

Key specs (from Goal Zero’s listing at BattlBox):

• Up to 600 lumens of warm white light, with a dimmer
• 360-degree light, or light just one side to save battery
• 5,200 mAh lithium battery with a USB output for phones
• Recharges from any USB port, a Goal Zero solar panel, or the built-in hand crank
• Runtime: 2.5 hours with both sides on high, up to 180 hours with both sides on low, and up to 320 hours with one side on low
• Fold-out legs and a carry handle; 1.1 lb

Why it fits a home outage: This is the light for the kitchen table or living room, where the household spends the evening. Turned up, it’s bright enough to cook by. Turned down, it stretches across a long night. One-sided mode is handy indoors: set it against a wall and you’re not spending battery lighting the wall.

The hand crank is the reason it’s my top pick. On night three or four, when your power banks are drained and the sky is gray, it still gives you light. Goal Zero rates one minute of cranking at about 10 minutes of light on low.

Honest downsides:

• It’s the heaviest pick here. It’s a tabletop light, not one to carry around.
• The crank is a backup, not a real way to recharge. Ten minutes of light per minute of cranking adds up slowly.
• There’s no built-in solar panel. To charge it from the sun you need a separate Goal Zero panel.
• Charging your phone from it drains the same battery that powers the light. Use that feature sparingly, or keep a separate power bank.

Check Price: Goal Zero Lighthouse 600

2. LuminAID PackLite Max 2-in-1: Best Solar Lantern + Phone Top-Up

Pick this if you want a lantern that recharges in a sunny window and can add a little charge to a phone in an emergency.
Skip this if you expect it to keep a phone running for days. It can’t. A power bank does that job.

Key specs:

• Up to 150 lumens
• Up to 50 hours on low
• 2,000 mAh battery with a USB output for phones
• Built-in solar panel, plus USB charging
• Inflatable, packs flat, waterproof; 12.5 oz

Why it fits a home outage: Solar is the recharge path that keeps working when an outage outlasts your stored power. Set it on a south-facing windowsill during the day and use it at night. It’s bright enough for a bedroom or a small kitchen, and it packs flat into a drawer or a go-bag. Being waterproof also makes it a sensible pick in hurricane country (see my hurricane preparedness checklist).

Honest downsides:

• 2,000 mAh is smaller than most phone batteries. Think of it as enough to send texts and check alerts, not a full charge.
• 150 lumens is a quarter of the Lighthouse 600’s output. It won’t light a large open room on its own.
• Solar charging through a window is slow on short winter days. Treat USB as your main charging method and solar as the bonus.
• If you don’t need the phone charging, the Nova does the lighting job for about half the price.

Check Price: LuminAID PackLite Max 2-in-1

3. LuminAID PackLite Nova: Best Budget Per-Room Light

Pick this if you want a solar light in every bedroom, the bathroom and the hallway without spending much.
Skip this if you want phone charging. The Nova doesn’t have it; step up to the Max.

Key specs:

• About 75 lumens (from a retailer listing; LuminAID does not publish a figure)
• Built-in solar panel, plus USB charging
• Inflatable and packs flat
• No phone charging
• $33

Why it fits a home outage: Most rooms don’t need a bright light. They need enough to find the bed, the door and the toilet without tripping, sometimes all night. The Nova covers that, it doesn’t get hot, and nothing happens if a kid knocks it off a shelf. I’d rather see someone buy three Novas than one expensive lantern they carry from room to room.

Honest downsides:

• Half the brightness of the Max, so it’s not for reading or cooking.
• No USB output, so it can’t help a dead phone.
• Like any small solar light, it needs daylight to keep going through a long outage.

Check Price: LuminAID PackLite Nova

4. Goal Zero Crush Light: Smallest and Cheapest

Pick this if you want one light per person, especially for kids, or a dim nightstand light that stays on all night.
Skip this if it would be the only light in a room where you need to work. It’s a personal light, not a room light.

Key specs (from Goal Zero’s listing at BattlBox):

• 60 lumens on high, 25 on medium, 6 on low, plus a flickering candle mode
• Runtime: 3 hours on high, 6 on medium, 35 hours on low
• Built-in solar panel (about 20 hours of sun for a full charge) or micro-USB (about 2.5 hours)
• Collapses to just over half an inch; 3.2 oz

Why it fits a home outage: Kids handle a blackout better when they have their own light that they control, and a child with a light doesn’t go looking for a candle. It’s also a good nightstand light for anyone who gets up at night, which matters for older adults. Falls in the dark are a real outage risk.

Honest downsides:

• It’s the dimmest pick here.
• No phone charging.
• The small solar panel needs about 20 hours of sun for a full charge, which is several winter days. Top it up by USB when you can.
• It charges by micro-USB, not USB-C, so keep the included cable with it.

Check Price: Goal Zero Crush Light

5. Energizer WeatheReady PRO-360: Best No-Recharge Backup

Pick this if you want a light that sits in a drawer for years and works on day five of an outage with no sun and no outlet.
Skip this if you won’t keep spare batteries on hand or check the lantern once or twice a year.

Key specs (from the Amazon listing):

• Up to 500 lumens of 360-degree light, three modes
• Runs on 3 D or 3 AA batteries
• IPX4 water resistant, shatterproof lens; 1.2 lb
• Runtime: the listing gives both 90 and 150 hours on low, so plan on the lower number

Why it belongs in your kit: Every other pick depends on stored charge, sunlight or a working USB port. This one only needs batteries, and batteries are easy to stockpile and quick to swap in the dark. Taking either D or AA batteries helps too, since AAs are the ones most homes already have. When a winter storm brings a week of gray skies, this is the light that still turns on.

Honest downsides:

• You have to store spare batteries and rotate them before they expire.
• Alkaline batteries can leak and corrode a lantern left in storage. Store it with the batteries out, or check it every six months.
• Over a long outage you’ll go through batteries, which solar doesn’t cost you.

Check Price: Energizer WeatheReady PRO-360

How Many Lanterns You Need, and Where

Short answer: buy for rooms, not for “a lantern.” Most homes need one bright lantern for the main room, one small light per bedroom, and one battery-powered backup. One lantern for the whole house means whoever carries it leaves everyone else in the dark.

How that plays out for different households:

• One or two people in an apartment: one PackLite Max for the main room, one Crush Light for the bedroom, and the Energizer if you don’t have a sunny window. About $105.
• Family of four in a house: a Lighthouse 600 for the living room, a PackLite Max for the parents’ room, a Crush Light or Nova for each child, a Nova for the bathroom, and the Energizer in a kitchen drawer. That’s six lights, but only one of them is expensive.
• Older adults or anyone unsteady on their feet: put a low light in every room they walk through at night. Falls are the outage injury I’d plan around first.
• Tight budget: start with the Energizer and a pack of batteries, which beats candles every time. Add a Lighthouse 600 or a Nova per bedroom over time.

Store every lantern in the same place, charged, with your other outage supplies. My power outage emergency kit checklist lists what else belongs with them.

How to Choose a Lantern for a Power Outage

How many lumens you need

About 100 lumens is enough to move around a bedroom or bathroom, and 250 to 500 lumens is comfortable for cooking or reading in a main room. That’s general guidance, not a standard; bigger rooms and darker walls need more. If you want the brightest lantern for a power outage, the Lighthouse 600 is the brightest here, but you’ll rarely run it at full power. Brightness costs battery, so a lantern you can dim is worth more than one that’s only bright.

Runtime math for long winter nights

Winter outages bring 10 to 14 hours of darkness a night. You won’t run every light at full power for all of it. A realistic night looks more like this:

• Main room: 4 to 6 hours on medium in the evening, plus an hour or two in the morning.
• Bedrooms: an hour at bedtime, then low or off.
• Bathroom and hallway: low light, possibly all night.

So check two numbers on any lantern: runtime on the setting you’ll use in the evening, and runtime on low for overnight. “Max runtime” claims are almost always on the lowest setting. The Lighthouse 600 shows why this matters: 2.5 hours with both sides on high, but up to 180 hours with both sides on low. Run it high only while you’re cooking, and one charge can cover several evenings.

The other half of the math is recharging. By night three, built-in batteries have been through a couple of evenings and winter sun is weak. That’s when it pays to have more than one way to recharge.

Battery vs rechargeable vs solar vs crank

Each recharge path fails in a different way, which is why a good plan uses more than one:

• Built-in rechargeable (USB): cheap to run and convenient, but only if you charge it before the storm or have a power bank to refill it.
• Solar: keeps working through a long outage as long as there’s some daylight. Slow, and weak through window glass in winter.
• Hand crank: works anytime, but gives a little light for a lot of effort. A backup, not a plan.
• Replaceable batteries (AA or D): work in any weather and store for years. You need spares, and you need to check for corrosion.

For bigger loads like a fridge, a CPAP machine or charging several phones, a lantern is the wrong tool. See my guide to backup power options for a home outage for power stations and generators.

Indoor safety

An LED lantern is the safest indoor light for a blackout. It has no flame, gives off very little heat and makes no fumes, so it’s safe to leave on low overnight. Even so, keep lanterns on stable surfaces where kids and pets won’t knock them down the stairs, and keep a low light near the top and bottom of any staircase at night.

Why Not Candles or Fuel Lanterns Indoors?

Short answer: candles are a fire risk, and fuel-burning lanterns can produce deadly carbon monoxide indoors. LED lanterns avoid both.

Candles are what most people grab in an outage. They get left burning in empty rooms, set too close to curtains, or knocked over by kids and pets in the dark. The CDC’s guidance on candles during a power outage recommends flashlights and other battery-powered lights instead whenever you can.

Propane, kerosene and white-gas lanterns are made for outdoors. Indoors, they burn fuel and release carbon monoxide, which you can’t see or smell. Its early symptoms (headache, dizziness, nausea) are easy to mistake for the flu. The CDC’s guidance on avoiding carbon monoxide poisoning warns against running generators, grills and other gasoline-, propane- or charcoal-burning devices indoors during outages.

The rules are simple:

• Never run fuel-burning lanterns, camp stoves, grills or generators indoors, including in a garage with the door open.
• Use LED lights instead of candles, especially in kids’ rooms and anywhere someone will fall asleep.
• Keep a battery-powered carbon monoxide alarm with fresh batteries before storm season.

If an outage is in the forecast, charge every lantern the day before. My nor’easter power outage checklist covers winter storms, and the public safety power shutoff checklist covers planned shutoffs during fire weather.

Common Mistakes

• Buying one lantern for the whole house. It ends up in the kitchen, and everyone else walks around in the dark.
• Storing lanterns dead. Top up rechargeable lanterns every few months and before any storm forecast.
• Trusting “max runtime” numbers. They’re measured on the lowest setting. Plan around the setting you’ll use.
• Leaving batteries in a stored lantern. Leaking alkaline batteries can ruin it.
• Using your lantern as the phone charger. Light comes first. Charge phones from a power bank if you have one.
• Counting on solar alone in winter. Short, cloudy days won’t fully recharge most small panels.
• Forgetting the stairs. Put a dim light near stairs overnight to prevent falls.
• Keeping the lantern where you can’t find it in the dark. Store at least one where you can reach it without light.

FAQ

What is the best lantern for a power outage?

For most homes, the Goal Zero Lighthouse 600 is the best lantern for a power outage. It gives up to 600 lumens for the main room, recharges by USB, solar panel or hand crank, and can top up a phone. Pair it with small solar lanterns for bedrooms and one battery-operated lantern as a backup.

What is the best light source to use during a blackout?

LED lanterns are the best light source during a blackout because they have no flame, run cool and make no fumes. A lantern lights a whole room hands-free; flashlights and headlamps are better for moving around. Avoid candles and fuel-burning lanterns indoors.

How many lumens do I need for a power outage?

As a rough guide, about 100 lumens is enough to move around a bedroom or bathroom, and 250 to 500 lumens works for cooking or reading in a main room. A lantern with a dimmer lets you use less light and save battery.

Are battery-operated or rechargeable lanterns better for power outages?

Use both. Rechargeable lanterns cost nothing to run and many recharge from solar. A battery-operated lantern works after several cloudy days when everything else is drained, as long as you keep spare batteries.

What’s the best rechargeable lantern for a power outage?

The Goal Zero Lighthouse 600 is my pick because it recharges by USB, a Goal Zero solar panel or its hand crank, and can top up a phone. If you want built-in solar, the LuminAID PackLite Max 2-in-1 recharges in a sunny window.

Is it safe to use a lantern indoors overnight?

Yes, if it’s an LED lantern. LED lanterns run cool and make no fumes, so they’re safe to leave on low overnight. Never use candles, propane, kerosene or other fuel-burning lanterns as an overnight light indoors because of the fire and carbon monoxide risk.

How long will a lantern last during a multi-day outage?

It depends on the brightness setting and whether you can recharge. The Lighthouse 600, for example, lasts 2.5 hours with both sides on high but up to 180 hours on low. Use high only when you need it, recharge by solar or USB during the day, and keep a battery lantern with spare batteries as the backup.

Sources

• CDC: Proper Use of Candles During a Power Outage
• CDC: Avoiding Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
• Product specifications: the makers’ own product pages for Goal Zero, LuminAID and Energizer, checked October 2026.