Why dimmers are different for normal and LED bulbs when both are connected to normal power?

Question

The title 😀

I would understand it for LED strips and so on, but if both bulbs are made for 230V (or whatever in US), why do they need different dimmers? Is there a difference in some dim range or something?

Thanks.

In: 14

Answer 1

To dim incandescent bulb, all you have to do is send less power to it, and it’ll glow less brightly. An old-style incandescent dimmer just adds some resistance so that the bulb gets less bright.

LEDs don’t work that way, unfortunately – if you don’t supply enough power to an LED, it just won’t light at all. In order to “dim” an LED, what you actually have to do is blink it on and off really fast – faster than a human eye can tell – and it’ll look less-bright overall. A dimmer that can dim LEDs is called a PWM dimmer – pulse width modulation. As you adjust the brightness up or down, a PWM dimmer adjusts how long the “on” pulses are compared to the “off” pulses, which adjusts how bright the light looks to us.