So, you’ve been wondering what dimmer would be best for your LED installation project. Is it going to be a regular LED dimmer? Or is it going to be a 0-10V dimmer? To make right decision, it’s important to know the different characteristics of these two very popular dimmers. Indeed, you want to choose the product that corresponds to YOUR needs, for the best cost-efficient outcome. With all this said, here’s what you should know:

Regular LED dimmers: two types

Forward-phase (TRIAC) and reverse-phase (ELV) dimming are the most common dimming mechanisms when we refer to “regular” dimmers. Forward dimmers are usually compatible with LED, incandescent and halogen. As for reverse-phase dimmers, they’re usually pretty good with LEDs. The advantage of using these dimmers is that they are compatible with most of LED lights and usually retail at a lower price. Just make sure the maximum wattage on the dimmer is equivalent or higher than the total wattage of the lights you want to dim and you should be good to go!

To make it simple, forward-phase dimmers phase cut the leading edge of the AC sine wave, while the reverse-phase dimmers cut the trailing edge of that AC sine wave. The Arani Regular Sliding LED dimmer-150W (DM1-150W-SL-3-WH-V2) offers both mechanisms to give you more possibilities during your projects! To learn more about Forward and Reverse-phase dimming, read our article here.

Note that 0-10V dimmable bulbs are NOT compatible with those “regular” dimmers.

0-10 V dimmers

Even though the concept is quite recent, 10-V dimmers, also known as analog dimmers, have proven themselves to be very efficient. The mechanism is simple and often used for commercial installations. How it works: a DC voltage signal, that ranges from zero to 10 volts, is what controls the light’s dimming. This allows a 100% light output when full voltage is used, and a 0% when it’s off. This means that the light can shine at any dimmed percentage between 0 and 100%, depending on the voltage signal. It’s important to note that this type of dimmer is only compatible with products made for 0-10V dimming, such as high bays and panels. One 0-10V dimmer can dim many lights (sometimes hundreds of them), which “regular” dimmers cannot do since the wattage of this many lights would be too high for them to handle! Even though 0-10V dimmers are sold at higher costs than “regular” LED dimmers, they will use much less power for dimming, making you save money on these bills! Plus, for larger amounts of lights to dim, you’ll probably just need one dimmer. So, this basically makes the total cost kind of equivalent or similar to the cost of a project done with “regular” dimmers.

As for our Arani 10-V LED Sliding Dimmer-720W, this one supports 2 configuration options: 1) When not using On/Off feature and only connecting the dimming wires to each fixture, an infinite number of 0-10V dimmable LED fixtures can be connected 2) When using On/Off feature and running the power of all fixtures through this dimmer, it can support up to 720W.

If you still aren’t sure about the differences between 0-10V dimmers and regular LED dimmers, feel free to contact us. We’ll be happy to help!

For any questions or comment, please contact us here.