It’s a widely held belief that if you switch out your incandescent bulbs for LED bulbs, you’ll be sacrificing appealing mood and ambiance for big energy and money savings. One reason for this misconception is that LED bulbs aren’t typically dimmable using the existing dimming wall fixture that works for incandescent bulbs. Why? Well, traditional dimmers for incandescent lights work by cutting down the amount of voltage that reaches the filament. In LED lights, all of the extra circuitry gets in the way and does not allow the dimmer to have a direct effect on the amount of light emitted from the LED bulb.
However, there are other ways to dim LED lights, one of them being pulse width modulation (PWM). PWM causes the LED to flicker on and off at a rate undetectable to the human eye; the flickers are then staggered depending on the desired amount of light. PWM is difficult to achieve and requires special circuitry including microprocessors and oscillators. In addition, voltage reduction can also dim LEDs, but the dimming effect is not linear, meaning the illumination will abruptly shut off once the voltage drops below what is needed to power the light to begin with.
Neither of these dimming techniques is particularly desirable, and can be tricky to install. Luckily, Elemental LED has found a better way to set the mood, using our dimmable power supply, which is a multiple voltage transformer that can be used in all install situations. Using this product, you can install any low voltage LED product to work with your already existing dimmer. No rewiring will be necessary, you can simply tap into the power supply adjacent to your new LED product, and—voila!—you have dimmable LED lights!
Check out our dimmable power supply here