One of the questions that have often plagued mankind is if the refrigerator light goes out when you close the door. That question aside, there may actually be a more legitimate refrigerator question that involves a light that must be asked.

That question is, why does your refrigerator have a light and the freezer doesn’t? It would seem beneficial for it to have one, as the light is often something that we rely on when we open the refrigerator door.

Photo: Unsplash/nrd

As it turns out, speaking with a refrigerator technician can provide you with a lot of interesting answers. This one comes from Today I Found out and the answer comes from Ed Dougherty.

He said: “It all comes down to cost/benefit and features. While it’s not terribly expensive to add a light, sealed fixture, switch, wiring, etc., relative to the cost of the whole unit, it does cost something and manufacturers want to save every dollar they can in the cost of manufacturing their product.”

Photo: Unsplash/Sidekix Media

He went on to say, “Studies have shown that people don’t open the freezer nearly as much as they open the refrigerator and certainly not as much for ‘browsing.’ Ice-cream sandwiches and similar items aside, when people open the freezer, they are generally going to be looking at getting something out that takes some further preparation. So the kitchen light will probably be on anyways. Thus, the benefit of having a light in the freezer is much less than in a refrigerator that often gets raided at night, to the point that manufacturers would rather save themselves the money of putting one in, as most people don’t really care or notice whether their freezer has a light or not.”

It seems like such a simple answer but as it turns out, that isn’t the only possibility.

Photo: flickr/Mark Doliner

Another possibility is the fact that ice crystals could build up on some of the older models. Those ice crystals would reduce how efficiently the freezer was working and the light would also be obscured by them.

Some other possibilities are that the freezer could be packed so full that the light would be useless or that you might have a shattered lightbulb in such a cold environment.