Dimming LEDs: How to Determine if Your Lights Are Capable

Nowadays, LED lights are widely used everywhere. They are a viable option for residential and commercial properties alike to replace inefficient incandescent and LED light fixtures because of the tremendous energy savings they provide. Common lights types now include built-in LEDs, making it possible to retrofit them into older fittings in a matter of seconds, allowing you to upgrade your lighting from incandescent, fluorescent, halogen, etc. to more efficient LEDs without having to replace your fixtures.

However, not every LED light lights can be dimmed.

Because of this, you should carefully consider your requirements before settling on a certain model of LED lighting. This is crucial when switching to newer, more energy-efficient LED lighting for the first time and preparing for a gradual dimming effect.

In this guide, we'll go over how to quickly assess whether an LED can be dimmed as well as how to use LED dimmers.

Are dimmable LED lights really necessary?

It is fairly usual for rooms in our homes to have several uses. Modern kitchens can be used for cooking, eating, and even working during the day.

You have the freedom to adjust the lighting around you to your activity thanks to dimmable lighting. When working on your cheque book, you could like a bright light, but when eating in the evening, you might prefer a dark, soothing light.

Additionally, the use of dimming has increased in commercial and industrial settings. Dimmable lighting gives your office space flexibility and enables the best illumination for your staff's tastes or needs. In addition to dimming, a lot of study has been done on color tuning in office settings.

Can you dim your LED lighting?

You need check a few things to make sure you have a dimmable light to begin with because not all LED lights can be dimmed:

1) Make sure the packaging for any finished LED fixtures or lights you purchase expressly specifies that they are dimmable. This needs to be made clear in the light's technical description or specifications. The lifespan of the light will be shortened if you use a non-dimmable LED on a dimmer because of the excessive flickering that will result.

Occasionally, a symbol resembling the one below is used to indicate that a light can be dimmed; sadly, there is no single universal symbol.

2) Does your LED dimmer work with LEDs? You will probably have a leading-edge dimmer if you are switching to LEDs from incandescent lamps. Older dimmers were probably made for higher wattage lighting and won't function with low-wattage LED lights. In these situations, you will need to select a different dimmer; see our suggestions at the end of this post.

Why can't some LEDs be dimmed?

The LED driver that the light utilizes determines whether an LED lights can be dimmed.

Every LED lights has a driver, which transforms electrical energy into the low-voltage constant current required by LEDs for operation. 

You have the luxury of selecting any LED driver you like, with the dimming choices you want, if you are creating your own setup using component LEDs. However, you are only able to choose from the manufacturer's selection of dimming settings when purchasing a finished LED fixture or lights.

Non-dimmable LED drivers only recognize ON and OFF as states. The non-dimmable driver will attempt to adjust and maintain a constant current if you start to vary the current to an LED lights. Eventually, the LED driver will become overworked and stop working.

On the other hand, dimmable drivers are designed to manage current fluctuations. Dimmable drivers will dim the LED using analogue or pulse width modulation (PWM) dimming to make up for the current loss.

How are LEDs dimmed precisely?

When designing an LED retrofit, dimming must be properly taken into account because LEDs dull differently from legacy lighting sources.

For instance, incandescent lamps create light by heating a filament wire until it glows. Simply reduce the voltage to make it dull; as the wire cools, less light is produced. As you can dim from 0-100 percent simply changing the voltage to the light source, this is an illustration of analogue dimming.

Instead of a heated filament, LED lights does not use diodes to produce light. A diode only has two possible states: ON, where it is emitting light, and OFF, when it is, you guessed it, dark.

Because of this, producing a dimmable LED lighting solution requires a different approach than dimming LEDs. Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) and analogue dimming are the two basic techniques for dimming LEDs.