If you’re shopping for LEDs, there are many options to choose from — and dimmer compatibility only complicates matters.
Even if you pick the proper color temperature, lumens rating and a desired beam angle, you might run into another snag: dimmers. In many cases, your existing incandescent dimmers won’t play nicely with newer LED downlight. Unlike incandescents, all of which dim indiscriminately, LEDs either dim or they don’t.
Do you need a special dimmer switch for LED lights?
The less electricity drawn, the dimmer the light. … If you’d like your LED to be dimmable, you need to do one of two things: find LED downlight compatible with traditional dimmers, or replace your current dimming switch with a leading-edge (LED-compatible) dimmer.
LEDs that are incompatible with dimmers tend to flicker.
If you use an LED down light with an incandescent dimmer switch, you may find that the down light:
- Doesn’t turn on at all.
- Only works at 100 percent brightness.
- Turns on but hums or buzzes loudly.
- Flickers at specific or all dimmer levels.
There is also a chance the LED works fine but shuts off or “drops out” below a certain brightness level. This happens when the applied voltage (or the average of the applied voltage) drops below the minimum voltage required to power the LED.
There have 9 things you MUST know before you dim LED downlight：