# LED lamps and low-cost drivers

> The switch-mode driver inside a cheap LED lamp can put measurable high-frequency harmonics on the circuit and produce visible flicker; well-filtered drivers do neither.

- Canonical URL: https://emfbase.com/emitters/led-lighting
- Collection: Sources & emitters
- Record id: `emitters:led-lighting`
- Status: verified
- Last verified: 2026-08-12
- JSON: https://emfbase.com/api/emitters/led-lighting
- Also known as: LED bulb, LED driver noise

## Key values

- **Category:** dirty electricity
- **Emission bands:** Driver switching harmonics
- **Environments:** home, workplace, school
- **Duty cycle:** While the lamp is on.

## Field strength by distance


## Mitigations, most effective first

- **A/B test lamps on the same circuit with a dirty-electricity meter and keep the quietest.** — Driver quality varies by more than an order of magnitude between lamps at the same price point.
- **Prefer lamps that state low flicker percentage and EMC compliance figures.** — Flicker and conducted emissions both trace back to driver design.

## Why no value is published at 30 cm

Emissions are driver-specific and conducted rather than radiated; compare lamps by measuring the same circuit with each lamp fitted.

## Measure with

- Dirty-electricity (line harmonics) meter
- Light flicker meter

## Related records

- [Dimmer switch and phase-cutting controls](https://emfbase.com/emitters/dimmer-switch): Phase-cutting dimmers chop the mains waveform and inject harmonics from a few kilohertz up to about 1 MHz onto the building wiring — the classic source of what practitioners call dirty electricity.

## Sources

- `sbm-2024` Institut für Baubiologie + Nachhaltigkeit (IBN) (2024). *Building Biology Evaluation Guidelines for Sleeping Areas (SBM-2024)*. https://buildingbiology.com/site/downloads/SBM-2024_EVALUATION_GUIDELINES_EN.pdf — ngo, link checked 2026-08-12

Data licence: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Dataset version 2026.08.1. Retrieved from EMFBase, https://emfbase.com.

This record is reference data, not medical or legal advice. Regulatory limits, scientific guidelines and precautionary values are labelled separately and answer different questions.