Electrical – What could cause the garage door overhead light to not stay on while the door is opening

The garage door will automatically reverse if it encounters too much resistance or if the sensor beam is interrupted.

To check for resistance, start with the door closed and pull the red handle. Then open and close the door. The movement should be fluid with no tough spots. If you encounter difficult spots, you likely have a bent track, a broken wheel, or a severe lack of track lubricant. Call a professional.

If the door opens with the opener fine, but reverses almost immediately when you try to close it, then you likely have a problem with your sensor alignment. One sensor should have a light on all the time. This is the transmitter. The other, your receiver, should light up when it has an unobstructed view of the invisible light beam the transmitter sends. It's easy to bump a sensor and move it out of alignment. Just bend it back in to position. Use the light on the receiver to help you so that you don't have to try and close the door to check your adjustments.

CFL bulbs used in the opener cause signal blockage until fully lit. I don't know why but while the CFL bulb is flickering the signal gets blocked. After the bulb warms up, and stops flickering (about 30-60 seconds) your garage door remote should work fine. This can be tested easily enough. Does the remote open your door when you just get home and open door? Door opened because the light was off. But when you are leaving the garage, you use wall switch to open the door and can't close it by remote while trying to drive away. That's because the CFL bulb is still warming up after you just opened the door to leave. Easy solution is to change out CFL bulb with incandescent light (old style bulb with filament). I've heard that LED lights do this too, but my hunch is that some folks think CFLs are LEDs and are calling them by the wrong name. LEDs are instantly on and quite expensive, while CFLs flicker until warmed up and purchase price is pretty low. So change to incandescent in Door Opener and happy motoring. Appliance bulbs are perfect for Garage door Openers.