Night light for children

[Jupiter01]

Hi All,

My two young children will often get up at night and walk to the bathroom or even daddy's bedroom! and for this reason, we always try to light up the landing so they can see where they are going. I currently leave on the lights in one of the spare bedrooms and close the door slightly (to reduce light flowing into landing). This room has an LED build and an LED downlight.

My landing has 5 LED downlights which are on a single switch and 2-way as we have a switch downstairs too.

Question - would it be more energy efficient to replace the landing light switch with a dimmer and set it to the lowest setting than have the bedroom lights switched on?
Also, how would the 2 way switching of the landing work if a dimmer is introduced?

I don't want one of the plug in lights but please let me know if there are any other suggestions.

 

[Nozzle]

Dimmers and LEDs together is a minefield - you need to make sure the dimmer and LED are specifcally compatible. The ones from TLC direct are if you pic the varilights. There's a complicated setup with master and slave dimmers if you want more than one. I suggest though that LEDs are already quite efficient, and turning the brightness down doesn't necesarily save energy... as the driver in the base still gives off a reasonable amount of heat. Law of diminising returns!

Nozzle

 

[Jupiter01]

Thanks @Nozzle. I can confirm that my LED downlights are compatible with a dimmer as I am using the same lights with a dimmer elsewhere in the house.

 

[SUNRAY]

Hi All,

My two young children will often get up at night and walk to the bathroom or even daddy's bedroom! and for this reason, we always try to light up the landing so they can see where they are going. I currently leave on the lights in one of the spare bedrooms and close the door slightly (to reduce light flowing into landing). This room has an LED build and an LED downlight.

My landing has 5 LED downlights which are on a single switch and 2-way as we have a switch downstairs too.

Question - would it be more energy efficient to replace the landing light switch with a dimmer and set it to the lowest setting than have the bedroom lights switched on?
Also, how would the 2 way switching of the landing work if a dimmer is introduced?

I don't want one of the plug in lights but please let me know if there are any other suggestions.

I don't know your capabilities and don't intend going back over your posts to find out so please don't take my comments the wrong way.

For a definite 80% reduction add an additional switch so you can have just one lamp lit?

It didn't look right but I have seen a 13A socket on the ceiling with a night light permanently on in a dark passageway.

How about adding an additional light and its own switch with a much smaller bulb of <1W ? Just food for thought, It doesnt have to be a full blown downlighter, something like this on a ceiling would be unobtrusive if you have the ability.

 

[ericmark]

I would consider fitting an extra PIR light, be it simple plug in or fitted in ceiling. However LED's are that cheap to run would not expect it to be cost effective.

 

[SUNRAY]

Most PIR's are somewhere between 1 & 4W so cost more to run than a 1W LED