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Do dimmers affect the life of LED? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by Tandybaum@lemmy.world to c/homeimprovement@lemmy.world

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In my kitchen I have a flushmount light with an integrated led. I put in an LED dimmer on the switch and all is working well.

However, I had to replace it way sooner than I was expecting. Is there a possibly that the dimmer is hard on it?

I have the exact same one on another non-dimmer switch that is still running fine. That said the other one gets much less use so it could just be that.

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[–] ptz@dubvee.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know LED bulbs don't like old-school dimmers, but I haven't really looked into ones made for LED bulbs; I'm assuming they work different and aren't just a variable resistor on a dial.

My guess would be the heat, as you mentioned.

[–] SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

As I understand it. LEDs work on PWM. The controllers should regulate it as needed.

So it’s changed from 120 to whatever internal DC current is needed and that’s cycled.

When you use a dimmer you’re lowering/raising that 120v which is messing with the bulbs AC/DC converter which is designed to take 120 and output the applicable DC current for whatever LEDs it has on the circuit.

It definitely won’t adjust the PWM rate or brightness except in some extreme range and I’d personally avoid it unless you have some bulb that says it’s fine (e.g. doing something clever to adjust the DC based on the AC input)