The author analyzes the luminous efficiency of the phosphor-conversion white light-emitting diode (LED) that consists of a blue LED chip and a yellow phosphor. A theoretical model is derived to find the relation between luminous efficiency (LE) of a white LED, wall-plug efficiency (WPE) of a blue LED chip, and the phosphor absorption ratio of blue light. The presented model enables to obtain the theoretical limit of LE and the lower bound of WPE. When the efficiency model is applied to the measured results of a phosphor-conversion white LED, the limit theoretical value of LE is obtained to be 261 lm/W. In addition, for LE of 88 lm/W at 350 mA, the lower bound of WPE in the blue LED chip is found to be ~34%. The phosphor absorption ratio of blue light was found to have an important role in optimizing the luminous efficiency and colorimetric properties of phosphor-conversion white LEDs.