Half My Bulbs Won't Light Up. We've Checked Everything

Dear friend,

I want to tell you the whole story of this one, honestly, because for a while, we were just as puzzled as you were. And the answer, when we finally found it, turned out to be something almost no one thinks to check.

Your chandelier was a large custom piece, with 200 lights, all dimmable. When you installed it, half the bulbs wouldn't light. So we sent you 100 brand-new bulbs, thinking perhaps some had failed in transit. You installed them, and still, half stayed dark.

Your electrician went through the whole fixture, carefully, and found nothing wrong with it. And he was right. There was nothing wrong with the chandelier. We were all a little stumped.

Then we found it. And it wasn't the light at all. It was the dimmer switch.

Here's the thing almost no one thinks about. Every dimmer switch has a maximum wattage it can handle. Your chandelier has 200 dimmable bulbs, and each one draws 5 watts. So the whole fixture, at full power, needs:

A 300-watt dimmer, asked to carry a 1000-watt light, simply can't do it. It's more than three times over what it was built for. So it couldn't power the whole fixture, and half the bulbs stayed dark. That was the whole mystery. Not the bulbs, not the wiring, not the chandelier. Just a dimmer that was too small for the light it was asked to carry.

Once you replaced it with a dimmer rated for enough power, every single bulb came to life.

Here's the good news, so no one worries about the wrong thing. Our dimmable bulbs are TRIAC dimmable, which means they work with the standard dimmers commonly used in the US. You don't need any special or expensive dimming system to use them.

The one thing to get right isn't the type of dimmer. It's the power. A large chandelier with many bulbs draws a lot of watts, and the dimmer has to be big enough to carry all of them. So if you're buying a large dimmable chandelier, here is the thing worth checking before you install it: add up the total wattage of the fixture (number of bulbs times the watts each one draws), and choose a dimmer rated for more than that total, with a little room to spare. A standard dimmer is fine, as long as it's rated for enough power.

Ask us, and we'll tell you the exact total wattage of your fixture, so you, or your electrician, can choose a dimmer that's right for it, before anything goes up on your ceiling.

Thank you for your patience while we figured this out together. And thank you for letting it become something that can help others, too.

Yours,
Marie
Founder, Lyfairs