What is Dim2Warm?

An LED that shifts to a warmer colour the further you dim it. On our spots the light drops from 3000K to 2000K, the same move an old incandescent bulb makes. An ordinary dimmable LED only gets weaker and keeps the same colour, and that feels cold.

Why dimmed LED light feels cold

This comes down to the difference between how an incandescent bulb and an LED make light.

A filament is simply a piece of metal you heat until it glows. The hotter it gets, the whiter it glows. Dim it and the filament cools, and the colour shifts to orange all by itself. That link between brightness and colour is baked into the physics; you cannot switch it off.

An LED works differently. The colour comes from the chip and the phosphor layer on it, and neither changes when you send less current through. It only gets weaker. So at low output you get the same white as at full power, and most people experience that as cold: it does not match what they are used to from dimming.

How Dim2Warm solves it

By putting two kinds of LED in one spot, a cooler one and a warmer one. The driver shifts the balance between them as you dim. Turned up full, mostly the cooler set burns; turned right down, mostly the warm one.

The result is that the colour drops along with the brightness. It is imitated rather than physics, but your eye cannot tell the difference.

What we carry

Eight products, and the differences go beyond the colour.

• The Vigo: 5W with 320 lumens, and an Ra above 95. That last figure is exceptionally high and you notice it at low light on wood, skin and food. Cut-out Ø55 mm.
• The Cavo: 6W with 330 lumens, Ra above 92, IP44 and a cut-out of Ø75 mm. Also in chrome.
• The Warmo: Dim2Warm and a CCT switch, so you set 2700K, 3000K or 4000K first and then dim towards warm. IP65 and only 27 mm deep.
• The Kubus wall light: two 3W COB modules, 390 lumens together, up and down, IP54 and therefore suitable under an overhang.

What that Ra means is covered in What is Ra or CRI in LED lighting?

You do need a dimmer for it

This is the part most often forgotten. Dim2Warm does nothing without a dimmer: with no dimmer the spot simply burns at 3000K like any other.

On the Cavo, dimming runs on leading-edge phase control, also called Triac. Do not put any random wall dimmer on that, because the wrong type gives flicker or a spot that drops out at low output. Which dimmer goes with what is in Which LED dimmer do you need for your spotlights?

If it does flicker, that is almost always the combination of dimmer and driver, not the spot itself. See Why does your LED lamp flicker?

Not the same as a CCT switch

These two get mixed up, and they do different things.

A CCT switch is a slider on the fixture that fixes the colour temperature during installation, for example 3000K or 4000K. After that it stays put until you open the ceiling again.

With Dim2Warm the colour changes during use, at the dimmer, without you having to be there. The Warmo has both: you pick the starting tone with the switch and drop towards warm from there.

When it is worth it

In places that need to soften in the evening: over a dining table, in a living room, in a bedroom. There you want bright light during the day and something like candlelight at night, which is exactly what these spots do.

In places where the light just goes on and off it is money thrown away. In a store room, a hallway or a garage you are paying for a property you will never use, because without dimming nothing happens. Why 2000K looks so warm is in What is extra warm white light?

The dimmable spots are at dimmable recessed spotlights.