Question: My interior lights come on when I open the door like normal, but I’d like them off all the time unless I press the button and turn them on myself. How do you turn off lights in a Jeep when the doors are open?
Answer: Good question! You can turn your Jeep’s interior lights off with the dimmer switch you use to control your dash lights. This will be a thumbwheel located to the left of the steering wheel with a symbol of a speedometer, near your headlight switch.
Here are the positions for the thumbwheel and what they do:
- All the way up: Interior lights turned on; dash fully lit
- All the way down: Interior lights will not turn on, even if doors open, dash at its dimmest
- In-between: Dash brightness in between settings; dome light will turn on when doors open
Turning the dimmer all the way down will make it so your interior lights are off unless you press the buttons on the dome lights to turn them on. However, this will affect your dash lights as well and dim them to the lowest setting.
If your ignition is turned OFF, your Jeep’s interior lights will turn off if any door is left ajar for 10 minutes (or if you have left the thumbwheel all the way up), as long as your Jeep has a battery saver feature, which is a feature in some Jeeps.
Jeep’s instrument panel too dim when dome lights off
If you’re the type of driver who wants your interior lights to stay off when you open your doors, then there’s only one official way to do it in a Jeep, which is to turn the dimmer thumbwheel to the lowest setting. The problem with this is that your instrument panel will also be dim and hard to see.
So what can you do if you want to have a brighter instrument panel and also want the lights to stay off when you open your doors?
In some Jeeps, you can turn the headlight knob to the off position and that will disable the interior lights completely.
If that doesn’t work, then unfortunately, there is no official way to do this and you’d have to modify your car for this to happen. You can always do it the old-fashioned way and tape your door sensors so they always register as closed. That way, you can have your interior lights off when the doors open while still being able to adjust your dash lights. Refer to your Jeep’s manual to locate the door sensors on your model.
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