After upgrading to LED lights you may experience flickering or flashing from an old dimmer switch. An underloaded dimmer is most often the cause of this. Old fashioned dimmers were not designed to control loads below around 20W. As such, they can sometimes struggle to dim a small number of low power LED lights.
Start by purchasing products that have market-proven wide compatibility, such as our range of dimmable LED lights. Just because other lights have flickered, it does not mean that all LEDs will flicker with your dimmer. Order at least enough lights for a complete room or light switch.
So if you have 6 lights attached to one dimmer, that's a good minimum number to order. This way, you can test them out with your existing dimmers, before committing to a complete upgrade. Now, if you have done the above and flickering is detected you can do some further testing. Add one of your old higher power light bulbs back to the affected circuit. If the flickering stops, you can either:.
Alternatively, you may be able to add a 'load correction device' to existing Clipsal dimmers or a 'load bypass device' for the Diginet range. Lighting dimmers typically sit behind the switch plate as pictured here. As such, they are a quick job for an electrician to upgrade or replace.
Whether or not a dimmer is involved, low voltage lights such as 12V MR16 's can sometimes flicker. Apart from the dimmer issue already discussed above, this can also be due to:. Sometimes degraded or damaged wiring such as MR16 connectors can cause flickering. Another common form of flickering is the fluorescent tube, in all its forms. Fluros can flicker when they are reaching the end of their life, or if the ballast is faulty.
In this case, LED tube lighting actually presents a solution, rather than being part of the problem! Often, upgrading to LED will both get rid of the flicker and massively reduce your energy usage. If your fluorescent light fittings have brittle connectors AKA 'tombstones' it could be time to upgrade the whole fitting. These lights are fully integrated - which means they no longer contain a separate 'tube' inside them. Based on the manual for your dimmer switch, there is an adjustment to change the low end of the dimming range:.
I would assume the switch would be factory set to work with most lights, but maybe the quantity of lights or their exact dimming capability is a little outside the norm.
Follow that adjustment procedure and see if it helps. If you feel like you have to adjust the minimum dimming to be quite high, you should also plug in all the lights and make sure that is not making the problem worse. LEDs on DC can actually be dimmed quite easily - just look at an older battery powered LED device like handheld computer games from the s and you can see the LEDs dim when the battery is low. That process does not lend itself well to dimming.
A modern dimmer is not, contrary to popular belief including what I thought when I was a kid simply reducing the constant amount of current or voltage. Rather, it chops up the power into little pieces and only sends some of those pieces to the lights. With incandescent lights, only the total power really matters much.
So this works fine on incandescent lights. So dimming becomes a lot more complicated. With LEDs in particular, it takes very little power to produce light, so you often end up in one of two situations:.
Essentially, the LED light has to figure out that the chopped up bits of power are not a deliberate attempt at flickering the lights but rather intended to dim the lights. But despite the best efforts, sometimes they just don't work well together. As you have found out the hard way. If both the LED fixtures and the dimmers claim compatibility, I would start by trying a different brand of dimmer to see if that helps.
As you dim down them, their flickering becomes more even and noticeable. What about randomness? Well, it flickers randomly to minimize harmonics disturbance. Wait, what's that? It's topic for another question on stack exchange If their respective packages don't say, then they probably aren't compatible and you will have problems. Even if everything claims to be compatible, you still might have issues.
In that case, the best you can do is experiment with different brands and models of each until you get a combination that works. AC dimmers make the light appear dimmer by turning the voltage on and off very quickly. This on-off effect happens at twice the line frequency e. LED bulbs typically need less voltage than is provided by the AC line, as well as constant forward polarity in contrast to AC's alternating polarity.
Packed inside the bulb is a small circuit to make these adjustments. Conversely, you could contact the manufacturer of your LEDs to see what dimmers are recommended. Best of luck! There are many reasons why an LED lamp can flicker, but the most common cause is a lack of resistance in the lamp to allow the dimmer curve to work correctly.
The same issue occurred, because the fluorescent lamp does not have enough resistive load between the load and neutral wires complete circuit. Over the years, we have done many things to try to stop that flickering issue with the fluorescent lamps and now with the LED lamps.
The biggest key is often to add resistance, but this does not always fix the problem. Many dimming manufacturers and LED manufacturers are now working together to prevent this issue.
However, depending on multiple variables, this can cause your electricity bill to become even more expensive. The best solution is to consider replacing your current dimmer switches with phase dimmers that are LED rated. A quick call to the electricians at Lon Lockwood Electric will have your dimmer switches AND your lights working in no time — without the flickering.
Lon Lockwood to the Rescue!
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