First Aid for Dimming (EHBD) dim your lights in 7 steps

• Posted on 8 May 2020
• By Nick Vriese
• 0

Dimming LED lights can cause some problems, blinking lights, buzzing dimmers, humming lights, inappropriate cover material etc. Here you can read which steps are important and what you need to consider for successful LED dimming.

Step 1: Lighting dimmable or NOT dimmable

Are the lamps you want to connect to the dimmer dimmable or NOT dimmable? You can often tell by the sign on the packaging. When there is no logo indicating that the light is dimmable or it is explicitly mentioned on the packaging, you can assume that the light is NOT dimmable. LED lamps are therefore not always dimmable by default. When the lamp is not dimmable, it is unfortunately not possible to dim the lamp, not even with an LED dimmer. This is because when non-dimmable LED lamps are dimmed, they will immediately start blinking.

Step 2: 12V or 230V LED lamps?

Most bulbs work directly on 230V, E27 and E14 also known as thin and thick sockets and GU10 (bayonet socket, mushrooms) are the best known in these. You can replace these 230V LED bulbs one-to-one. If the bulbs are dimmable, you can also connect them directly to an LED dimmer.

There are also some commonly sold 12V lamp types (e.g. G4, MR16 or MR11 spots). If you are going to dim these, it is precisely the transformer that is important. The halogen transformer, for instance, works with a ballast of 30-500W, which is often indicated on the transformer itself.

With LED lighting, you often fall below the minimum power of, say, 30W, which means the LED lamps will not dim on this transformer. In this case, the lamps will often start flashing. If you want to dim these LED lamps, you will need a special DIMBLE LED transformer.

Step 3: LED dimmer? What is an LED dimmer?

As in step 2, the minimum connection capacity of the dimmer plays a major role. So in most cases, you cannot use halogen dimmers to dim your LED lamps. This has to do with the minimum power of the halogen dimmer.

For example, the minimum power of the halogen dimmer is 40-400W or 60-600W. Again, with LED lighting, you often fall below the minimum power of the dimmer, as a result of which the lamps will not dim stably, will not dim at all, start flashing or buzzing. With an LED dimmer this power is, for example, 0-150W or 0-450W, so you do not have these problems regarding the minimum power.

Step 4: Phase on or phase off?

When dimming LED, there are two different dimming techniques, the dimming technique is often indicated on the dimmer by RL, RC or RLC.

Phase cut - RL - leading edge - TRIAC - Magnetic

Phase cut - RC - trailing edge - TRONIC - Electronic

The dimmable driver (part in the lamp base) of the lamp actually determines whether it works with phase cutting or cut-off technology. Unfortunately, it still often happens that this is not shown on the lamps. Should this be the case, it is best to choose a phase-cutting LED dimmer, which is what about 90% of the market works best with.

In addition, there are now universal LED dimmers that support both techniques. So-called RLC LED dimmers (phase on and phase off). When the wrong combination is used between lamp and dimmer, this often results in an irritating hum and/or squeak in the lamp or dimmer.

Step 5: What is the type of ballast and power to be connected?

What will you connect to the dimmer and how many watts in total? For example, it is not conducive to the dimmer to connect both halogen and LED lamps combined to the dimmer.

We recommend connecting one type of ballast to a dimmer whenever possible and not combining them. The best result is achieved when the wattage and the make of the lamps are also the same. This is because then all dimmable drivers (parts in the lamp that make the lamp dimmable) work in the same way and that gives the most calm and stable dimming image.

It is also a good idea to check the connection wattages on the dimmer. There are often two types of ballast on the dimmer. One for LED and one for halogen/light bulbs. It is usually the case that more halogen power than LED power can be connected to a dimmer.

For example 5-85W LED power is 10-350W halogen power, then we are talking about the same dimmer. With EcoDim dimmers, the connection wattages are always shown in LED power. We have developed our dimmers on this basis to be able to market them as widely as possible. Our dimmers are suitable for 0-150 to 0-450W of LED power. Depending on the type of EcoDim dimmer.

Step 6: Correct dimmer, but the lamps still blink.

Step 1 to 5 correctly performed, but still troubled by blinking lamps? This is often in the low or high light level.

This is because the lamps (drivers) are receiving too much or too little input from the dimmer. When there are no adjustment options on the dimmer, this is almost impossible to filter out. You can often solve this with a dimming stabiliser. You then have to place it in front of the LED lamps. This does involve some extra handling.

EcoDim almost always has a MIN and MAX controller on the dimmer. This allows you to set the high and low light levels. So if the lamps blink or go out completely in the low light level, you can turn up the MIN slightly, which will give the dimmer more power. The dimmer will remember this setting as the lowest light level. For the MAX, this works exactly the same way.

Step 7: Cover material

Once we have sorted out the technical issues regarding the dimming and have coordinated and adjusted them, we are left with the cover material. When buying the dimmer, always make sure that your existing cover material, if any, fits it. This is because there is a lot of product protection in this market.

At EcoDim, we have made sure that most well-known brands of cover frames fit our flush-mounted dimmer. We have included an accessory set with all our dimmers to make this fit. Our dimmers are made to fit, among others:

• Berker by Hager
• Busch-Jaeger (with the exception of 6540-7x)
• Gira
• JUNG
• Kopp
• Merten by Schneider 51xx and System M
• Niko (except XXX-31003 and PR20)
• PEHA

If you have any questions about LED dimming or want to know which dimmers you should use, you can always call or e-mail us.

If you would like more information about our dimmers, please let us know.