During routing, a crucial requirement in the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is to achieve energy efficiency since the sensor nodes have minimal energy resources. In WSN, mobility of node causes major problem in designing an energy-efficient routing protocol. Clustering helps to attain this by reducing the network overheads and complexities. Hence, this paper aims to explore the optimal cluster head (CH) for energy efficient routing in WSN. The key contribution relies on optimal CH selection, in which an algorithm named Lion based Firefly algorithm (L-FF) is used. Accordingly, a new multi-objective model is developed with respect to the various constraints such as distance, delay, and energy. Finally, in terms of throughput, network lifetime, mean residual energy and Standard deviation with the improvement of the presented method is established over existing models.