The required wattages for these dimmers are much lower, making them more compatible with the lower wattage of LED light bulbs. As such, they share a number of characteristics that make them much more compatible, such as comparable wattage ranges and inherently digital makeup. Trailing edge or LED ready dimmers have been designed specifically for use with LED light bulbs.This lends them a much higher wattage range (normally anywhere between 250W and 1000W) making them less likely to work with LED light bulbs, though this can be possible if the required tolerances are met. They’ve been around much longer and are traditionally used to dim traditional incandescent and mains halogen light bulbs. Leading-edge dimmers are by the far the more popular of the two.You’re welcome.įor those of you that are still with us, it’s best to think of things as simply as this… Now, at this juncture, I’m aware that there’ll be some amongst you that are itching to know exactly how this works, which is why I’ve kindly included a our leading edge and trailing edge dimmer guide here.
Okay, so there are numerous types of dimmer switch available, but by far the most popular are the two that we’ll be concentrating on today – leading edge and trailing edge phase-cut dimmers.Īs their name implies, both work by trimming the voltage at various phases of an alternating current’s sine wave, thereby reducing the power they send to the lamp. What’s the Difference between Leading Edge vs.In this instance, it’s best to check what kind of dimmer switch you have.
This assumption is based on the idea that leading-edge dimmers have been around much longer and are therefore more ubiquitous than the newer trailing edge variant. If you’ve been using your dimmer with incandescent or halogen light bulbs in the past, I’d wager (not a betting man, remember) that it’s a leading-edge dimmer, though this may not always be the case. This would entirely depend on the type of dimmer you have.