Electrical – Disable dimmer switch

electrical

I have a strange setup in one room of a house I bought. I'm not there at the moment so I can't provide photos so I will describe as well as I can.

On one side of the room there are two switches, one that turns the room light on and off, the other turns an outside light on and off.
On the other side of the room there is a dimmer switch that can also turn the room light off.
I never use this dimmer switch and would like to disable it.
When I use the light switch, the lights flicker a couple of times and then slowly come up to 100% brightness.

This flickering, I believe, is causing issues with Smart lights as they keep resetting.

To be clear, I can turn off the lights from both switches, but the dimmer switch will override the main light switch if it is turned off. If the main switch is off the dimmer switch will not turn the lights on. If the main switch is on, the dimmer switch can turn the lights off.

How would I disable the dimmer switch to give full control of the lights over to the single on off switch on the other side of the room?

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Best Answer

A key question, as noted in the comments, is whether this is a real 3-way setup, where either switch can be used at any time to turn the light on or off, or some sort of "crazy thing" (like in the dining room I grew up with - timer replaced one 3-way switch and we had to always remember to leave the other switch "on").

Assuming this is a proper 3-way switch, with one of the switches being the dimmer:

  1. Turn off power at the breaker
  2. Open up the dimmer switch. You should find 3 wires (plus possibly a green or bare ground wire).
  3. Determine which wire is common (which may be hot or switched hot, but doesn't actually matter much) and which two wires are travellers. How you do that will vary depending on the setup. If the wires attach to screws on the dimmer then usually two screws will be one color and the 3rd screw will be a different color. The screws with the same color should be the travellers. Or the wires may actually be labelled on the dimmer. But color (except green for ground) is no guarantee of anything (unless wires are part of the dimmer and labelled on the dimmer). If it isn't 100% clear, upload pictures before disconnecting any wires.
  4. Remove the dimmer and install a simple 3-way switch (you can get regular or Decora, plus get a face plate to match). The new switch will come with instructions that should make it very clear which wires or screws are for the travellers.
  5. Put everything back together and turn on the power.
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