Are these fittings dimmable?

nLdn

Hi,

The flat I have just bought has these two ikea light fittings in the kitchen and study.

They use 35W G10 halogens and I want to replace these (and eventually other fittings in the property) with lower running cost LEDs as I spend a lot of time in both rooms. I may want to be able to dim them too when I get round to it, especially in the study.

How to I know if I can use a dimmer with these units? The instructions on the Ikea website say nothing about dimmers for these. Is it as simple as me getting the right bulbs and replacing the switch with a dimmer at some point?

Any pointers?

Thanks in advance!

Ben

Head_The_Ball

G10 Halogens are usually dimmable but, if you want to get a dimmer that will suit the existing G10s and also work with dimmable LED bulbs in the future then you need to get a trailing edge dimmer.

Traditional dimmers for incandescent and halogen bulbs use leading edge technology and that doesn't work with LEDs.

I have just bought a Varilight V Pro trailing edge dimmer from Screwfix. It works with my current golf ball incandescent bulbs but will also work if and when I change to golf ball LEDs in future.

Most LEDs are not dimmable even with a trailing edge dimmer. You will need to buy Dimmable LED bulbs.

I will find and post some links for you in a while.

Head_The_Ball

Here is a link to a description of Varilight V-Pro dimmers.

http://www.varilight.co.uk/dimmers/v-pro.html

There are other makes of trailing edge dimmers available although Varilight are considered by many to be one of the best.

When you do choose a dimmer you need to calculate the load that it will be required to drive.

I have 10 x 40 watt (400 watts) incandescent bulbs so I chose a dimmer that can handle up to 400 watt incandescent load. The same dimmer will only handle up to 100 watts in total of dimmable LEDs.

My previous dimmer would only handle up to 250 watts maximum which was fine when we had two lights with 3 x 40 watt bulbs each, a total of 6 x 40 watts (total 240 watts) bulbs in the ceiling. When we recently changed to 2 lights with 5 x 40 watt bulbs (400 watts) each we needed a new dimmer as above.

I bought the V-Pro in case I change to LEDs sometime.

It cost about £14.50 at Screwfix.

Here are some links to leading edge versus trailing edge dimmers.

https://www.google.co.uk/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=uV6dVqOFDcTPoQfY_qGYBQ&gws_rd=ssl#q=trailing+edge+vs+leading+edge+dimmer