The good thing about the lamp dimmer set up is you can have more control over temps and by marking whats 10,15, degrees above room temp it makes it easy to adjust. As a side note though if your herps are in a fairly small room Honeywell makes a fantastic space heater that has a digital thermometer that you can set up to 85 degrees,keeps my enclosures at 80 regardless of how cool the house is and theres no worries about the room getting to hot since the thermostat automaticaly shuts it off if its 85 in the room. For 50 dollars its worth it (hot spot 90 ambient temp 80) no worries.