Lighting, Light Fixtures, Ceiling and Exhaust Fans - Not enough power to the lights

I have wired two lights between a three way switch and a three way dimmer. However when I turn on the lights I only get half (or less) the amount of light I should get out of the lights. It's as though the dimmer is set at half way. The power comes in at the three way switch and travels from one light to the next light and then to a three way dimmer. Can you tell me why I'm not getting full power to my lights. How should the wiring look? Help!!

Your lights are wired incorrectly. You do not have enough wires running between the switches for this to work.

The easiest, imo, way to run a 3 way setup is power in to SW1, 3 wire + ground cable to SW2, from SW2 to first light using 2 wire + ground.

Was this a new install or did you rework existing? What did the 3 ways control before? Post back and this can be fixed.

This is also a very common problem. People try to extrapolate the wiring diagram for one light to multiple lights and it doesn't work.

As pcboss says, I prefer the Power-S1=S2-L1-L2-L3-... approach because it the easiest to get right and the hardest to screw up.

But Power-S1=L1=S2, and L1-L2-L3-... also works well (with careful wiring).

What cannot possibly be made to work is what you have now, i.e., Power-S1=L1=L2=S2.

("=" is 14/3 and "-" is 14/2)