Lights not working after replacing blown light bulb

Question

Room with two recessed lights, each with a 65 watt bulb, controlled by light switch and dimmer. One of the lights blew out and the casing cracked off when I tried to remove it. When I did this the other light went out.

I checked the panel and none of the switches were tripped. So I carefully removed the broken piece from the first light, and then replaced both lights with new bulbs. Turned on the switch and nothing. Check the bulbs in another room to make sure they were good, and they were. Checked the panel again, and still nothing tripped. For good measure I then tripped all the switches in that area of the house, and still nothing.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

Answer 1

Look for GFI outlets and reset them.

Confirm the switch is functioning and confirm there is power to the switch.

Check for power at the dimmer in the loop, it may have been damaged.

Answer 2

I have had dimmer units damaged when a light bulb burns out. In some types of bulbs the broken filament can fly around momentarily and create a closed circuit within the bulb that is much lower resistance than a normally working unit. This can cause a current surge that is much higher than the rating of the semiconductors inside the dimmer and thus fail. Dimmers can fail open or shorted.

More than one time for me the dimmer failures have happened in Torchiere type floor lamps that were accidentally knocked over whilst they were turned on. The sudden shock from the fall takes out the bulb and then the built in dimmer switch for same reasons as described above.