Why isn’t there a light in my freezer? For some reason, that benefit is reserved for the fridge. Geraldine Blake, Worthing
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Readers reply
The light in your fridge comes on when you open the door. The light in your freezer comes on when you shut the door, which is why you’ve never noticed it. Randomusername222
Surely the fridge light is designed purely to enable post-midnight snacking – I can’t imagine many people come downstairs in the dark to munch on frozen garden peas! 231184
But … late-night ice-cream. Winkynuke
Reminds me of Viz magazine’s “top tip” for people who want to be sure the light in your fridge really has gone out when the door is shut: drill a hole in the fridge door … Slatewiper
There’s a light in our freezer – and, funnily enough, the light in the fridge is broken. Unsurprisingly, the manual says you need to get one of their engineers to fix it. Hagedash
Do you really want to see all the stuff you froze years ago because it might come in useful? Dominic
A related question: why does my “clever” fridge have an alarm that tells you if the door is left open, but the freezer doesn’t? kelvingreen
Does it have an alarm that tells you when you’re running out of milk? TeaDrinking
Maybe they tried it and found the switch kept getting stuck in the off position as ice built up around it and it was too unreliable to be worth doing. Perhaps it’s just to make an extra quid of profit per freezer. It might be just an accident of history that has just become how things are done. IrishIain
Because the freezer is designed to be opened and closed quickly before things start to thaw and not for you to stand and gaze at the shelves before deciding what to take out. It is also why there are cartoons on the shelves encouraging you to store meat on one, vegetables on another, etc. There should always be a shelf or tray reserved for gin. chymist
Our freezer, with drawers, also has a light! Maybe we’re posh. BlackRunWiz
First, pre-LED filament bulbs would get hot when lit, which would defrost the freezer once the door was shut and the heat was trapped inside (much like putting warm food straight in the freezer) or put stress on the compressor. Second, a hot glass bulb may shatter when quickly and repeatedly cooled and then instantly heated from -10C (or colder) when relit.
Third, domestic freezers generally have drawers (or are top-loaded), which you pull into the existing illumination, whereas fridges are cupboards into which overhead light does not reach, so only the latter need internal lights. (It’s probable that drawers came about to mitigate the inability to have internal lamps, though, rather than causing them to be omitted.)
Now that we have LEDs, bulb heat is no longer problematic, but we’ve become used to their omission in freezers. Also, commercial freezers might get colder than the operating range of LEDs allows. HaveYouFedTheFish
Light freezes at 2C. This means it’s fine in a fridge with an average temperature of 3C, but any colder than this the light freezes solid. For example, if a freezer had a light inside, when you opened the door, you’d have to first chip your sausages or peas out of the frozen light block to retrieve them. In addition, when the light melted, it would bounce around the kitchen and could dazzle you at a crucial moment. Matt Allen
Come to think of it, why isn’t there a light in my sock drawer? EddieChorepost
One thing my dad did when he retired was fit lights at the back of all the kitchen cupboards, which come on when the doors open. ILikeChips
