Dwelling in a house filled with dimmer switches can make the lighting aisle appear more intimidating than it must be. Certain, plenty of at present's LEDs are designed with dimmability in thoughts, however that doesn't assure passable efficiency. We've heard loads of complaints from readers, and EcoLight lighting also experienced first hand the annoyance of spending cash on upgraded EcoLight lighting, only to find that these fancy new bulbs can buzz, flicker, and EcoLight home lighting dim erratically. Within the interest of constructing your subsequent journey to the lighting aisle rather less exasperating, we put as we speak's LEDs to the take a look at. There are many things that may cause a light bulb to buzz or flicker when it dims, EcoLight lighting together with things beyond the bulb's management like voltage irregularities, EcoLight overloaded circuits, and out of doors interference. The most typical challenge, though, lies with the dimmer itself, and that's where we decided to start out. Modern dimmers (the sorts you may find on the shelf at Lowe's or House Depot) will not truly elevate and lower the voltage for easy dimming, however will instead flash the facility up and down at unnoticeably high speeds to create the illusion of dimming.

These speedy-hearth swings in voltage create electromagnetic resistance within the bulb, which can cause issues to vibrate and buzz. You don't want that. We began with a simple rig utilizing a few common dimmer switches. We chose an LED-suitable mannequin from Lutron, an identical Leviton change, and an inexpensive, EcoLight $5 triac rotary dial intended for incandescents only. Although we aimed for a superb illustration of what's out there, there are clearly more than three sorts of dimmer switches on the market. As such, your mileage may differ -- particularly if you are utilizing an older mannequin, or something more high end. Curiously sufficient, each and every LED that we examined dimmed with all three dimmers, even the one rated only for incandescent use. That lends quite a lot of credence to producer claims of vast dimmer compatibility -- but it is only the beginning of the story. As you'll see, dimmable LEDs usually are not all created equal. Dimming annoyances aren't a new downside -- and they are not a problem that is unique to LEDs, either.

The tungsten filaments in most incandescent bulbs are notably prone to the buzz-producing vibration brought on by in-wall dimmers. Sure sufficient, EcoLight lighting the 60-watt incandescents that we examined out in our rig put out a noticeable buzz throughout all three switches. Even with out filaments, LEDs have plenty of parts that can vibrate and produce that annoying buzz, EcoLight bulbs and most of those we tested did simply that, even nicely-rated bulbs just like the Cree 60-watt alternative LED and the GE Reveal LED. We rated each bulb's buzz on each dimmer using a five-point scale -- very quiet, quiet, EcoLight dimmable reasonable, loud, and really loud. The end result you need is a bulb that rates "very quiet" throughout the board, as even a "quiet" buzz can get annoying in a quiet room. For probably the most part, the buzzing in the LEDs we examined fell somewhere within the middle: fairly moderate, EcoLight lighting but definitely loud enough to be a respectable trouble. There were two standouts, though -- one good, and one not so good.

Apparently enough, they both came from Philips. The overachiever was the present generation of the company's normal 60-watt replacement LED, which ran darn near silent throughout all three dimmers. We could not even hear something once we dimmed it using a budget, incandescent-only dimmer. Bookending the opposite finish of the spectrum was the Philips SlimStyle LED, which produced the loudest buzz of any bulb we examined. This makes sense when you think about that in trials like these, buzz is de facto just a product of a bulb's design. With a radically totally different shape from the usual, close to-silent Philips LED, along with a reorganization of the diodes themselves, it is not terribly surprising that the SlimStyle's buzz is so much louder. All that said, EcoLight lighting it is worth reiterating that we did not notice an audible buzz with any of these bulbs when using them with normal wall switches, so if you do not use dimmers in your house, then an reasonably priced LED like the Philips SlimStyle would possibly make a variety of sense.

Edit

Pub: 28 Aug 2025 16:14 UTC

Views: 3