What IEC 60529 actually defines
IEC 60529 fixes the code itself: what each digit means, how each test is carried out, and what a claim of a given level entitles a maker to say. It is a genuine standard with genuine test procedures.
For the first digit it fixes everything — 6 is dust-tight and the test says how that is established. For the second digit up to 7 it fixes everything too: IPX7 is one metre for thirty minutes, written into the document.
Where the standard stops defining
At 8, it stops fixing the condition. The standard states that the conditions are to be agreed between manufacturer and user, and that they are more severe than 7. A product rated IP68 at 2 m for 24 hours and one rated IP68 at 1.5 m for an hour both carry the same three characters.
It does not promise resistance to pool water. Chlorine, salt and stabiliser are not part of the test, and a seal that keeps out tap water for a season is not thereby proof against a salt cell’s output.
And it does not promise a service life. It is an ingress test, not an endurance test, and nothing in it addresses what ultraviolet does to a lens over three summers.
The depth, and what else the page carries
The depth the maker states, which is the figure that turns the rating into information and which pages here print in its own row. Mounting — magnet, suction, screw-in, floating — because a light that cannot be retrieved is a light that has to survive everything. Runtime and charge time on rechargeable units, since a battery inside a sealed case is the part that ends the product’s life. And the materials statement where a maker gives one.
Lighting, robots and the floating instruments
Pool lighting above all, where the rating is on the front of every box. Robots and handheld vacuums, where the rated part is usually the power unit rather than the body. And the measuring shelf — testers and thermometers — where a floating instrument carries an IP code for splashing rather than for immersion, and where the difference between the two is exactly the second digit.
What readers keep writing in to ask
Does IP68 mean I can leave a light underwater permanently?
It means the maker tested for continuous immersion at a depth and duration they specify. Where that depth is published, the page prints it. Where it is not, the page says the depth was not published — and that is the honest reading of an unqualified IP68.
How do IP67 and IP68 differ?
IP67 is defined by the standard as one metre for thirty minutes — a fixed, stated condition. IP68 is anything more severe, agreed between maker and user. So IP67 is the more precisely defined of the two, which is the opposite of how the two are usually read.
What does the first digit cover?
Solids. A 6 means dust-tight, which is the figure nearly every product on this shelf carries. It matters less here than the second digit, but a product quoting only one digit and an X — IPX8, say — has only been rated for water and not for dust.
Does IP68 mean it survives pool chemistry?
No. The test is with water. Chlorinated and salt water attack seals, cable glands and lens adhesives in ways plain water does not, and makers address that separately in their own materials statements where they address it at all.
Last reviewed 21 September 2026