DIM LAMP FULL

You’re under-loading your dimmer! This is a fairly common problem when people remove their old incandescent light bulbs and simply replace them with LED equivalents. Why are my LED light bulbs flickering or not dimming correctly?

DIM LAMP FULL

This is one of the myriad reasons why full compatibility cannot be guaranteed, which leads me neatly on to my next and final point… However, it’s important to stress that this logic purely serves as a rule of thumb and is by no means exact. In this instance, it would be able to take 4 x 10W LED light bulbs or less, providing that the minimum wattage is still met. I’m afraid you’ll need to divide the dimmer’s maximum wattage by 10 to get its relevant value for LED light bulbs. However, this doesn’t mean that you can then go and stuff 40 x 10W LED light bulbs on there and still make up the 400W.

It will accept 4 x 100W incandescent light bulbs without any issue and you can dim them to your heart’s content. So, imagine we have a 400W trailing edge dimmer. When a dimmer’s rated wattage is defined, it doesn’t take account of an LED light bulb’s drastically superior efficiency. The main root of this problem is the massive disparity between incandescent and LED wattages. How many LED light bulbs can I use on my dimmer? One of the biggest problems people experience when installing trailing edge dimmer systems is working out just how many LED light bulbs it will support. How many LED light bulbs can I use on my dimmer? Most manufacturers rigorously test their products for compatibility with a range of dimmer switches and the results are normally readily available on their respective websites. The best way to avoid confusion here is to check which dimmers are compatible with a certain type of light bulb. Again though, trailing edge dimmers CAN also be used to dim traditional incandescent light bulbs if the wattage tolerances are still met, and they do this more effectively than using a leading-edge dimmer to dim LED light bulbs. The required wattages for these dimmers are much lower, making them more compatible with the lower wattage of LED light bulbs. As such, they share a number of characteristics that make them much more compatible, such as comparable wattage ranges and inherently digital makeup. Trailing edge or LED ready dimmers have been designed specifically for use with LED light bulbs.This lends them a much higher wattage range (normally anywhere between 250W and 1000W) making them less likely to work with LED light bulbs, though this can be possible if the required tolerances are met. They’ve been around much longer and are traditionally used to dim traditional incandescent and mains halogen light bulbs.

Leading-edge dimmers are by the far the more popular of the two.For those of you that are still with us, it’s best to think of things as simply as this… Now, at this juncture, I’m aware that there’ll be some amongst you that are itching to know exactly how this works, which is why I’ve kindly included a our leading edge and trailing edge dimmer guide here. As their name implies, both work by trimming the voltage at various phases of an alternating current’s sine wave, thereby reducing the power they send to the lamp. Okay, so there are numerous types of dimmer switch available, but by far the most popular are the two that we’ll be concentrating on today – leading edge and trailing edge phase-cut dimmers. What’s the Difference between Leading Edge vs. This dimming for dummies guide aims to address each of the whys and wherefores from the wonderful world of dimming, and it’s my hope that you’ll emerge on the other side a bonafide dimming dynamo.īefore we dive headfirst into our dimming odyssey though, we’ve included a FAQ of questions below. Dimming your traditional incandescent light bulbs is still fairly straightforward, as I’ll explain below, but dimming LED light bulbs is somewhat trickier. The proliferation of LED light bulbs in recent years has magnified these benefits yet further, with massively reduced wattages and hugely inflated lifetimes meaning that our light bulbs are now lasting longer than ever before.īut (there’s always a but), the advent of LED has also completely changed the dimmer game. However, this actually carries with it a host of less obvious but equally favourable benefits such as reduced energy consumption and improved longevity – the longer your light bulbs are dimmed, the less energy they use and the longer they last. I’m not a betting man, but if I was asked to wager why most people choose dimmable light bulbs over their standard counterparts, I’d probably go with their aesthetic potential.īy manipulating a tiny knob on one’s living room wall, it’s possible to completely alter the mood and ambience of a room at the drop of a hat. Our team have extensive experience with dimmer switches and LED lighting.įor more information, call our friendly and knowledgeable customer service team and we will be happy to assist.

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