What does IP rating mean?

IP rating means “ingress protection” rating of a certain fixture or fitting. Now I hear you ask, what the bloody hell does that mean? Well, lets break it down.

Ingress: The action or fact of going in or entering; the capacity or right of entrance.

Protection: The action of protecting, or the state of being protected.

So together this means, protecting the appliance from anything foreign entering the equipment i.e. dust or water.

Now that’s out the way, we have the numbers that seem to follow anything that says “IP”. The first number is talking about solid foreign bodies and the second number relates to liquid foreign bodies. To confuse you further, sometimes you may see an “X” in place of the number. This X means the appliance has not been tested for this particular thing. For example, IPX4 has not been tested against solid foreign bodies.