Too bright

[gigz]

I have 6 down lights in the living room (5mx4m) with 50w gu10 bulbs in (they came with the lights). What's the dimmest gu10 bulbs you can get ? Iv'e taken 4 of the bulbs out for the moment and it's a lot better.

 

[ericmark]

Pound World I think it was who sell 0.58W GU10 LED lamps but I am sure you don't want to go that far.

I got some 3W LED lamps from B&M at £9 for three and they work well. With tungsten you can get 10W but likely you will pay more for special 10W tungsten than cheap 3W LED.

 

[DaftPunk]

Just get a dimmer switch

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Dimming halogen lights shortens their life.

 

[DaftPunk]

Soft start dimmers extend their lives.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Not if you use them to dim the lights.

 

[ericmark]

The whole idea of a quartz halogen lamp is the quartz is that hot the tungsten will not be deposited on the envelope but instead back onto the tungsten element over time the element thickness will vary until in the end one bit will become too thin and it will rupture. When this happens the inside of the lamps gasses can ionise causing very high currents for a few micro seconds this is the flash we see as the bulb fails.

This means two things.
1) Dimmers reduce lamp life.
2) At end of lamp life it can destroy the dimmer.

With the introduction of cold cathode, florescent, and LED dimmers also become a problem in that dim-able versions cost a lot more. Also when you dim any tungsten lamp it does not only reduce the light output be also changes the colour temperature so using the 1/3 and 2/3 split giving three levels of lighting without changing colour is far better and works with LED lamps without a problem.