Mathmos Astro Baby too bright

[Nova]

I purchased a Mathmos Astro Baby Blue/Yellow this week, and it's very pretty.
https://mathmos.com/product/astro-baby-lava-lamp-silver/

However, I'm finding that the area where the yellow lava sits at the bottom is really bright from the bulb, and it sort of distracts from the rest of the lava.

It comes with a Mathmos 28W GU10 bulb, I was wondering if it's safe to swap that out for a lower wattage bulb and/or use a plug-in dimmer to reduce the output of the bulb?

I emailed their customer support about it, and they recommended against using any dimmer or non-Mathmos bulbs, but there seem to be lots of examples of people using dimmers on their lava lamps online, so I wasn't sure if there's something different about Mathmos lamps that makes them unusable with dimmers?

[Paul]

You can use dimmers and non Mathmos bulbs without a problem. I always buy bulbs from Amazon for example, far better quality than the ones Mathmos sell and a fraction of the price.

Blue/Yellow is just a particularly bright bottle however. 

[Nova]

Ah thanks, that's good to know.

I went for blue/yellow as it was the closest colour palette to my previous (brand unknown) lava lamp which had lasted for nearly 20 years before giving up the ghost, but that one had a lower wattage bulb and the bottle had got a bit cloudy so I was used to a lower level of light output compared to a brand new one.

Regarding replacement bulbs, 25W bulbs seem to be more commonly available than 28W. Am i right in thinking that it's safe to use a 25W bulb instead of 28W, as it's only a 3 watt difference?

Paul said:

You can use dimmers and non Mathmos bulbs without a problem. I always buy bulbs from Amazon for example, far better quality than the ones Mathmos sell and a fraction of the price.

Blue/Yellow is just a particularly bright bottle however. 

[Paul]

You might find the bottle wont flow very well with a 25w but you could try. I use 35w and 50w for Astros, both with a dimmer. 

The bottle you have looks great (and a lot more subtle) when running in a Evo so that might be somehting to consider. 

Nova said:

Ah thanks, that's good to know.

I went for blue/yellow as it was the closest colour palette to my previous (brand unknown) lava lamp which had lasted for nearly 20 years before giving up the ghost, but that one had a lower wattage bulb and the bottle had got a bit cloudy so I was used to a lower level of light output compared to a brand new one.

Regarding replacement bulbs, 25W bulbs seem to be more commonly available than 28W. Am i right in thinking that it's safe to use a 25W bulb instead of 28W, as it's only a 3 watt difference?

Paul said:

You can use dimmers and non Mathmos bulbs without a problem. I always buy bulbs from Amazon for example, far better quality than the ones Mathmos sell and a fraction of the price.

Blue/Yellow is just a particularly bright bottle however. 

[Nova]

I don't mind too much if the flow is slower or takes longer to heat up, I was mainly concerned from a safety perspective. I'm not too familiar with how bulb wattage works so I wasn't sure if there was a risk of something blowing up if I were to use a different wattage to the one of the official bulb.

Paul said:

You might find the bottle wont flow very well with a 25w but you could try. I use 35w and 50w for Astros, both with a dimmer. 

The bottle you have looks great (and a lot more subtle) when running in a Evo so that might be somehting to consider. 

Nova said:

Ah thanks, that's good to know.

I went for blue/yellow as it was the closest colour palette to my previous (brand unknown) lava lamp which had lasted for nearly 20 years before giving up the ghost, but that one had a lower wattage bulb and the bottle had got a bit cloudy so I was used to a lower level of light output compared to a brand new one.

Regarding replacement bulbs, 25W bulbs seem to be more commonly available than 28W. Am i right in thinking that it's safe to use a 25W bulb instead of 28W, as it's only a 3 watt difference?

Paul said:

You can use dimmers and non Mathmos bulbs without a problem. I always buy bulbs from Amazon for example, far better quality than the ones Mathmos sell and a fraction of the price.

Blue/Yellow is just a particularly bright bottle however. 

[LampHead]

Cover the top of the bulb with a small piece of tin foil. If you dim the bulb, the lamp most likely will not flow correctly.