We obtain new lower and upper bounds for the numerical radius of a bounded linear operator A on a complex Hilbert space, which refine the existing ones. In particular, if w(A) and ‖A‖ denote the numerical radius and operator norm of A, respectively, then we show that (Formula presented.) where ν(A)≥0 is a real number involving the operator norm of the Cartesian decomposition of A. We also develop several new numerical radius inequalities for the products and sums of operators via Euclidean operator radius of 2-tuples of operators. In addition, we deduce equality characterizations for the inequalities. As an application, we obtain numerical radius inequalities for the commutators of operators, which improves the Fong and Holbrook’s inequality w(AB±BA)≤22w(A)‖B‖ [Canadian J. Math. 1983].