My house currently has Fluorescent lights in several areas. It was built in the 70s and they look like they are probably pretty old fixtures. I have Inovelli White dimmers and I know they don’t support Fluorescent lights so I’m trying to come up with other solutions.
First - can I just replace the Fluorescent bulbs with LED tube bulbs? Will that work? Or is it the ballast that is actually the issue?
Second - I know this wanders outside the specific subject of Inovelli - but assuming I need to or want to just remove the Fluorescent fixtures all together and replace with something else, does anyone have any suggestions on some good multi color + white LED strip or rope light type products that will direct wire (and will work with Inovelli White)? The current fixtures are hard wired (they aren’t plugged into an outlet) so I’m wondering if there is a good LED product that I can basically swap out pretty easily. The fixtures are all above kind of an overhang so none of the fixtures are actually visible from the rooms. Only the light is visible. The reason I mention that is to say - the new product/solution doesn’t need to be pretty since only the light will be seen.
This question kind of spans a couple categories so hopefully it was appropriately posted.
It’s the ballast that’s the issue. If you remove the ballasts and replace with LED tube bulbs that directly take 120 volts, you’ll be able to use it with Inovelli dimmers. I’ve done this a few times with red series dimmers.
Interesting. I didn’t know any Inovelli products officially support fluorescent fixtures. I’m looking over the page and don’t see any mention of the word “fluorescent”, is there another term I should be looking for?
Do you have a link to a product you’re referring to? You say remove the ballasts, but then say to use LED tube bulbs - those still use a ballast don’t they? Or am I misusing terms?
I’m pretty sure it was these ones that I installed but there are many different variants depending on your tube size and connectors.
The bulbs are capable of working with or without a ballast, I rewired the fixtures to remove the ballast so that there was 120v AC power available with the line on one side and the neutral on the other side.
There are two ways to retrofit LED tubes into a fluroescent fixture. The first way is easier, using LED tubes that are designed to work with existing ballasts. You simply swap out the tubes and you’re done. If you go this route, you’ll need the On/Off switch as @pkscout mentioned. Here is an example:
The other way is to remove the ballasts and install a retrofit kit, which typically requires re-wiring the fixture, swapping out endcaps, etc. This is what @rohan described. SOME of these are dimmable. Here is an example of a non-dimmable one.