I bought a three way lamp (by accident) and was wondering if I could use a regular light bulb instead? The three way bulbs cost more than 4x the price of a normal one! Ouch!
Thanks
Yup. No prob.
As twickster said, no prob. I have many tri-light lamps in my house but no tri-light bulbs. What is a little strange is that instead of the normal two way off/on of a regular lamp or the four way off/low/med/high of a tri-light, you end up with off/off/on/on. I.e. you may have to hit the switch twice to change the lamp’s state. You get used to it fast though.
Someday, when you have a better paying job, if you have a light on a dimmer switch that makes a noticable humming noise, try replacing the bulb with a tri-light. I have heard that the dimmer will work as before but the bulb will not make noise.
Why would that be?
For the dimmer, it would still only be a resistive load, and I can’t see how it could be ‘aware’ that there now is a ‘three-way’ bulb.
(That said, we don’t have ‘three-way’ bulbs this side of the Atlantic, so I can’t test myself.)
A good bulb can mask a cheap dimmer. If you have a humming bulb in a dimmer set up, you have a cheap dimmer control or one that ain’t working perfectly.
An old fix is to get a 3-way bulb or a bulb built for vibration resistance (such as a garage door opener bulb). Three way bulbs have beefy filaments, lime the vibe resistant ones, and could eliminte the humming caused by a cheap dimmer control switch.
Thanks for the info guys
I have a question about your question.
Why did you ask and not just try it?
Because I didn’t want to risk frying my wiring or burning the house down if it didn’t work. You never know about these things… 