Blog – Dimming 12 or 24VDC LED Lights

Dimmable transformers for LEDs give way to a stylish LED dimmer and driver packaged in one, easy to install a device.

Beautiful white light emitted from long-lasting, energy efficient LEDs. What could be better?

Controlled, beautiful white light! As LED lighting gets brighter and better, we’re using it everywhere. Often, one fixture serves as both super bright, clean task lighting as well as soft, mood enhancing accent lighting. Take under cabinet lighting as just one example. When you’re preparing food and cooking, you need all the light you can get on the surface in order to accomplish that safely and precisely. At night though, when the family vacates to another room and may make short, infrequent trips to the kitchen to retrieve a snack or a drink, all of that bright light is simply unnecessary and can even be wasteful in spite of the low power consumption you enjoy with LED lighting. As LED lighting itself has improved, so have the controls we use in our LED lighting installations. Today, many strip light solutions and even ceiling and outdoor LED lighting operate directly at 120VAC, eliminating the dimming dilemma. Those fixtures employ a standard household dimmer that most homeowners and installers are very familiar with. However, there are still quite a few LED lighting fixtures that are designed to operate at 12 or 24 VDC. These fixtures use an AC to DC transformer which plugs into your standard household outlet. In order to dim a 12 or 24VDC LED fixture, you need to dim the low voltage (12 or 24VDC) input to the fixture, and NOT the line voltage supply to the AC-DC transformer. You will find all of our LED dimming solutions on the same page on our website. The first of the LED dimmers is shown at the far left. This is a Zane 4 wire dimmer. Two wires are connected to the output of your power supply. Two wires are connected to the input of your LED lighting fixture. Dimming is controlled by a rotary dial. This dimmer is available with or without a wall plate. The dimmer without the wall plate referred to as our ‘mini-dimmer’ is quite useful for those of you needing to control LED lighting from a control panel. It can also be used inside cabinetry and so forth, as it is very small and easy to conceal. Although the Zane dimmer is highly reliable and easy to use, customers demanded more in the line of looks. They wanted their dimmers to match other lighting controls already in their homes such as the Lutron and Decora lines. Along came the dimmable magnetic transformers are shown at centre above. This device will dim your lights by employing a standard 120VAC input dimmer. There is a list of compatible dimmers on the product page, so please check that to make sure the dimmer you have will work well with the dimmable magnetic transformer. Also, be aware that this is a dimmable transformer and is not designed to work with a switch. Damage can occur if you attempt to do this. Another drawback is that these units are quite large and relatively heavy. Your electrician will have to find a suitable place to mount the device. There is a complete set of instructions on Youtube that you can and should view prior to installing these devices. To view the videos, simply scan the QR code on the installation instructions found inside the box with your product. At long last, we can now offer you two very up to date dimming solutions: the Reign dimmers and the Switches. The Reign dimmers have an updated look and feel and match up with Decora plates. Your choice of button, slide or touch in a variety of colours. These dimmers do require the use of an AC-DC transformer but are easy to install and get the job done right for you the first time. The Switches is a totally new and amazing innovation. It’s a driver and dimmer in one. No transformer to buy or hide. Line voltage in, output to your 12 or 24VDC product, install in outlet box and done! The Switches is an IMAP product. That means that we’ve agreed not to publish a selling price on our website below a certain level. That does not prevent us, however, from quoting you on your entire project as is appropriate for the volume you are purchasing from us. So don’t be put off by the price. Keep in mind how much you will save in installation and additional product cost. When you add it all up, the total equals savings. Do you have questions about dimming your LED lights? Our technical sales staff is here to answer any and all of your questions. We look forward to serving you.

By: Mary Wecker