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How are LED lights dimmed?
To understand how LED lights dim, it’s worth comparing LEDs to incandescent bulbs for a moment.
Incandescent bulbs produce light by making a wire filament so hot that it glows. To make it dim, simply provide less voltage and the wire won't get as hot, resulting in less light. This can be described as analog, as light can be controlled on a range from 0% to 100%.
LED bulbs, however, produce light from a diode, which only has two states. It is either ON and producing light, or OFF and completely dark.
This means we need a different way to produce a dimming effect in LED bulbs. For which there are two main methods: Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) and analog dimming.
Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)
With PWM, if you wanted to dim an LED to 70% brightness, you keep the LED on for 70% of the time and off for the remaining 30%. On average, you have 70% light, so mission accomplished, right?
But why don't we notice the bulb turning on and off?
PWMs exploit a problem with our vision. The light is flickering, but the human eye can only see at a frequency of around 80Hz. In the background, our brain automatically fills in the gaps to make our vision feel smooth. It does this by averaging the difference, meaning the light appears dimmed.
This dimming is indistinguishable from an analog incandescent bulb, thanks to a weird quirk of our anatomy.
How are LED lights dimmed?
To understand how LED lights dim, it’s worth comparing LEDs to incandescent bulbs for a moment.
Incandescent bulbs produce light by making a wire filament so hot that it glows. To make it dim, simply provide less voltage and the wire won't get as hot, resulting in less light. This can be described as analog, as light can be controlled on a range from 0% to 100%.
LED bulbs, however, produce light from a diode, which only has two states. It is either ON and producing light, or OFF and completely dark.
This means we need a different way to produce a dimming effect in LED bulbs. For which there are two main methods: Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) and analog dimming.
Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)
With PWM, if you wanted to dim an LED to 70% brightness, you keep the LED on for 70% of the time and off for the remaining 30%. On average, you have 70% light, so mission accomplished, right?
But why don't we notice the bulb turning on and off?
PWMs exploit a problem with our vision. The light is flickering, but the human eye can only see at a frequency of around 80Hz. In the background, our brain automatically fills in the gaps to make our vision feel smooth. It does this by averaging the difference, meaning the light appears dimmed.
This dimming is indistinguishable from an analog incandescent bulb, thanks to a weird quirk of our anatomy.
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