Our 2022 Forest River Sabre 36BHQ is equipped with reading lights in the bedrooms. The lights provide more than enough light to read — much more. Read on to find out how we replaced the reading lights with dim-able LEDs.
Our RV is equipped with 12 volt lights throughout. The factory installed lights have a push activated button to turn the light on and off, but they are in no way dim-able. This presents a problem as the lights are much too bright for anyone in our family to sleep under.
We found 12 volt dim-able LED lights on Amazon that we thought would be more suited to the task at hand.
Replacing The Lights
Replacing the lights was as simple as:
- Remove the plastic cover from the OEM light. Do this by rotating the plastic cover counter clockwise. The cover may be difficult to remove. In fact, the cover may be so difficult to remove that you become convinced that it is glued in place. It isn’t. It’s just stuck.
- Gently pull the wires until the wire nuts come out of the hole.
- Carefully remove the “hot” wire (usually red) supplying power to the OEM light.
- Place the “hot” wire (red) from the replacement light into the wire nut and close the clamp.
- Repeat steps 3 & 4 for the ground wire
- Gently push the wires back up into the hole
- Install the light using the screws provided
- Install the plastic screw covers
The light is turned on by pressing the shiny “button” in the center of the light. The first touch turns on the blue night light. This light is bright enough to read under, but people with blue light sensitivity may have trouble sleeping with this light on. Another push of the center button turns the soft-white light on. The white light’s brightness can be raised or lowered by pressing and holding the button in the center of the light.
We like these lights, but they could be improved in two ways.
First, the blue light could be red. People with blue light sensitivity may find it difficult to sleep under this light’s blue “night light” function. Second, the light should have an additional off between the blue and white lights.
When someone is reading under the blue light and finished their reading for the night they have to cycle the light through the white function to turn it off. This blast of white light can be disturbing to anyone sleeping (or anyone else nearby). It would be better if the light went blue, off, white, off.
While these lights are not perfect they are a more versatile light than the lights that they replaced. If you need a dim-able replacement light for your RV consider these lights. They work great as reading lights, or as night lights. We even installed one in our kitchen to act as an overnight light.
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