VARILIGHT is Presented With The Queen's Award for Enterprise

HRH The Duke of Kent Presents Varilight With The Queen's Award for Enterprise

As another busy year comes towards an end we were honoured last week to welcome His Royal Highness The Duke of Kent  to our head office in Faygate where we were presented with the Queen’s Award for Enterprise.

The Queen's Award, in the category of Continuous Innovation, was given in recognition of our success in bringing innovation to the electrical wiring accessories market and, in particular, for our technological development in designing dimmer switches for LED lighting.

Our V-Pro LED dimmer has become a flagship product and raised the profile of the VARILIGHT brand, bringing with it increased interest in our entire range of decorative switches , sockets and dimmers, including our new V-Com series dimmers for larger LED lighting loads. 

As the UK's leading manufacturer of dimmer switches, we at VARILIGHT were the first to react to the requirement for a dimmer switch to control LED lighting. We undertook a complete redesign of the traditional dimmer switch to create our V-Pro series, which is equipped with features to optimise the dimming performance of LED lighting. For example, an adjustable minimum brightness setting enables the user to define the best dimming range for any given LED lighting load, eliminating flicker and exploiting the full dimming capability of individual LED light bulbs.

With our new V-Com series we aim to build on this success by addressing the increasing need to control larger LED lighting loads with options up to 600W. 

We were a previous winner of the award in 2006 and are delighted to have been honoured for a second time this year. The presentation was an opportunity for many of our staff to take a break from what has been an extremely busy December and share in the celebrations.

As we reflect on a successful year, I would like to thank you for your support and to wish you a very happy Christmas from all of us at Varilight.

New Advice for Dimming Halogen Lighting

With the current focus on LED lighting, it's easy to forget that millions of halogen lamps are still sold each year in the UK and their use remains widespread. Although halogen lamps are offered at low prices, there is a hidden cost from relatively high failure rates. 

Halogen lamp failures often occur when they are switched on rapidly by a conventional on/off switch but this issue can be overcome by using soft‐start dimmers. Soft-start dimmer switches gently increase the power supplied to a lamp when the dimmer is first turned on, allowing the lamp to warm up gradually, reducing failures caused by stress on halogen lamps when they are switched on. 

So, for the best results with halogen lighting, choose our V-Plus series intelligent dimmers which feature soft-start to regulate the power supplied when the dimmer is first switched on. V-Plus dimmers are suitable for both 1- and 2-way circuits. In a 2-way circuit the dimmer is used in conjunction with a regular switch but the soft‐start feature of the dimmer still regulates the power when the switch is used to turn on the lights. 

For large halogen loads, a new 1000 watt V-Plus dimmer is being added to our range. In white plastic, for example, the part number is IQP1001W. It is recommended that this dimmer is used in place of the HQ9W dimmer for halogen lighting. 

 All our touch and remote control dimmer series feature soft start and so are also suitable for halogen loads in 1-way and 2‐ or multi‐way circuits in conjunction with dimming slaves.

For 1-way circuits our V-Dim series rotary dimmers offer a budget solution for halogen lamps. Similar life‐prolonging benefits are achieved because rotary dimmers switch on at their lowest setting. This, in effect, creates a manual soft‐start for 1‐way circuits and so a new TQR1001W rotary dimmer rated at 1000 watt is being introduced to the V-Dim series. For more information on any of dimmer switches please visit our website, www.varilight.co.uk.