Why does your LED lamp flicker?

In the vast majority of cases it is not the lamp but what sits in front of it: a dimmer or transformer that is not getting enough load. LED uses so little power that older equipment no longer reaches its threshold and starts switching irregularly. That is what you see as flicker.

Work through these five causes

From most to least common:

1. A halogen dimmer on LED lamps. It only starts working at 20 to 40 watts. Six 5-watt spots come to 30 watts, which is exactly the borderline where it goes wrong.
2. A non-dimmable lamp on a dimmer. Dimmability sits in the driver or in the lamp itself. If it is not stated, it will flicker or not come on at all.
3. A halogen transformer on 12 volts. Same story as the dimmer: too little load, irregular output.
4. The wrong type of dimmer. A phase dimmer comes in two flavors: leading edge (R.L.) and trailing edge (R.C.). If the type does not match your driver, it flickers. Our dimmers are trailing edge; it is printed on the front.
5. A loose connection. Less common, but the most dangerous. If one spot flickers and the rest do not, look at the wiring.

How to find it in two minutes

Turn the dimmer all the way up. Still flickering? Then it is probably not the load but the type of dimmer or the lamp.

Does the flickering stop at full power and only start as you turn it down? Then it is almost certainly the lower limit of your dimmer.

Is only one lamp in a group flickering? Then it is that one lamp or that one driver, not your installation.

The most common fix

An LED dimmer with a low minimum load. Our LED dimmer 0.5-250W at €21.95 and the 0.5-160W at €24.95 both start at half a watt. A single 4-watt spot sits well above that, so you do not have to hang extra lamps to keep it stable. Both are trailing edge dimmers; check whether the driver in your fixture supports that type.

If you are on 12 volts with an old halogen transformer, replace it with an LED driver. Our 20-watt 12V driver feeds a maximum of six spots, the 40-watt version a maximum of ten.

Flicker you only see on camera

Does your phone film stripes or shimmer while you see nothing with the naked eye? That is something else. Every LED flickers along with the mains frequency; how well the driver smooths that out determines whether you notice. On a camera sensor it still shows up, because the sensor runs at its own frequency.

That is not a fault. If you do notice it with the naked eye, for example out of the corner of your eye, then the driver is of lesser quality and only a different fixture will help.

When it is the lamp after all

With a fixture that has an integrated LED, you cannot replace the light source separately. If it starts flickering without anything having changed at the dimmer, and it does not go away at full power, the fixture is worn out. Our range lists the lifespan per product and it ranges from 15,000 to 54,000 hours — the Ferro sits at the top with 54,000 hours.

Work with the power off

If you are going to replace something, switch off the circuit at the fuse box and not just the light switch. If you are unsure about the wiring, have an electrician do it. The step-by-step for choosing the right dimmer is in the dimmer guide, and the dimmers and drivers themselves are with the accessories.