Yo.

A while back Mum bought a table lamp that was 'touch dimming' where
repeated 'touches' to the lamp body gave you from off to 'low', 'med',
full and off again. I think it suggested a 'max' 40W (ses,
incandescent) mini globe but I think I tried a 30W equiv LED and it
appeared to works fine.

She has now got a couple more such lamps beside a bed and so I bought
a couple more LED lamps but this time I went for 40W equiv units, not
considering the tops weren't 'frosted' like the first one. Now, they
work ok but because you are often standing over those lights when you
turn them on ... and these particular lamps go 'off / full / med / dim
/ off', you get a face full of fairly bright light. ;-(

Now, whilst it's no biggie, I checked back in Homebase and it seems
most of the (TCP) ses LED mini globe LEDs that are dimmable are the
same (clear tops) but there are frosted top lamps but they are marked
as 'non dimmable'.

So, assuming the first LED lamp I tried was also non-dimmable and
seems to work fine, what is it about 'dimmable' that makes them so
please. Would there be any issues using non-dimmable LEDs with a
dimmer like that if they actually seem to work ok or could it cause
the lamp to fail prematurely or worse?

Cheers, T i m.