Why do my lights keep flickering?
A couple of lights in the flat flicker now and then, and one LED downlight flickers a lot. Is this just cheap bulbs, or something I should worry about?
4 answers
Depends whether it's one light or all of them:
One light flickering: - Loose bulb — reseat it. - LED on a dimmer not rated for LEDs — very common; use a trailing-edge LED dimmer or a non-dim circuit. - Failing LED driver — the bulb/fitting is on its way out; replace it.
Several/all lights flickering, especially when big appliances switch on: - A brief dip when an AC/heater starts can be normal, but persistent whole-home flicker can mean a loose neutral or poor connection at the DB — checked promptly by an electrician, since loose connections overheat.
So: single light = usually bulb/dimmer/driver (fairly DIY). Whole home = get it looked at. Whole-home flicker usually means a loose neutral or a supply fault — one for Al Ghubaiba's electricians to trace before it gets worse.
The dimmer thing was mine — swapped to an LED-compatible dimmer and the flicker stopped completely.
One to add for anyone landing here: flickering (the light dipping or stuttering while it's on) is a different thing from a faint glow when the switch is OFF. If yours glow when they should be off, that's usually an illuminated switch, a leaky dimmer or — the one actually worth checking — a switched neutral, and it's covered in a separate thread on LED downlights glowing when switched off. Flicker-when-on and glow-when-off have different causes, so it's worth knowing which one you've actually got before you start swapping bulbs.
One more marker for the 'should I worry' line: a brief dip when a big load kicks in is usually fine, but flicker across the WHOLE flat, or flicker together with warm switches/sockets or a faint buzzing, points at a loose connection or a supply-side issue rather than a bulb, and that is a heat risk worth getting checked rather than living with. Protection-and-wiring makers such as Legrand publish good background on what separates a harmless lamp/dimmer flicker from an installation fault.
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