L.E.D. dimming YES OR NO

[Brian Mercieca]

Can I dim a Led? Will it burn out the Led faster?

Thanks Brian

[-klb-]

It depends.. Only this year is there a C7/C9 retrofit LED bulb that can be dimmed. The 2007 CDI LED strings dimmed nicely.. The 2008 LEDHolidayLighting strings also dim well. The 2008 CDI strings die much faster when dimmed, and sometimes catch on fire... In general, the consumer grade LED strings seem to be OK, but there doesn't appear to be as much test data on them...

The common element on the ones that will fail if dimmed are the ones that have capacitors in the design.. These specifically include the 2008 CDI strings, and the non dimmable retrofit bulbs, that use a capacitor for current limiting..

[Brian Mercieca]

Thank you klb

[Denny]

I have dimmed LED strings from Home Depot without problem for two years.

[taybrynn]

This year I used the 60ct LED strings from Walmart and they faded extremely well. That are the M5 (chisled / button top) unit that are wide-angle and very bright.

In fact, compared to the regular walmart mini lights they were much brighter and had a much nicer blue color.

I also used a variety of strings from Home Depot, Walgreens, Target ... and they all faded fine under LOR. No failures and some of those have been used several seasons now.

As others have said, the LED bulbs you have to be careful with are the REPLACEABLE C7 and C9 LED bulbs ... typically they would die when faded a lot, or not last as long ... but the new dimmable C7 and C9 bulbs are supposed to work fine.