So now that you know all about dimmers, what are some practical installation options?

This of course highly depends on the form-factor of the dimmer. Dimmers that are surface mount or intended to mount in the wall are pretty hard to change, but others need some kind of mounting bezel to properly install them.

The dimmer at the right was made from a standard commercial dimmer that was originally surface mount. I modified it for a flush mount look. You can find the details here Undersink Dimmer LED Strip Project

Some dimmers, such as the PCA Electronics EPL101x dimmer are simply constructed around a potentiometer, and needs to be mounted via thru hole.

There are a couple of options for doing this. First, you can have a custom panel made as shown at the right from my favorite panel-maker (FrontPanelExpress). This will cost you around $20... which while not cheap, is cheaper than the dimmer.

Since you design the panel using FrontPanelExpress'es Designer, you can make this kind of dimmer fit just about anywhere.

Often, when adding a dimmer, especially one that has it's own on-off switch, you will be replacing the original switch with the dimmer control.

In this scenario, we replaced the original light switch in the RV's control panel with the dimmer. This is accomplished by purchasing a blank switch cutout cover, then drilling a hole in it for the dimmer control. You can buy the blank panel (C&K; 57190200) at the normal electronics supply houses; DigiKey, Mouser, etc.

Details on how this is done are shown below: