A level control circuit uses a reference voltage generated from a mains voltage signal by a reference circuit to provide a feedforward control signal. This control signal is used to generate a control signal for controlling a switched mode power converter. The reference circuit comprises a combining circuit adapted to apply a pulse width modulation control signal indicative of said level such that said reference voltage contains the level information. In an embodiment, the reference circuit comprises a voltage divider comprising a resistor circuit and the combining circuit comprises an adjustment module to which a pulse width modulation control signal is applied thereby to change the effective voltage divider ratio to implement level control. The level control further comprises a buffering capacitor or a buffered low pass filter coupled to the output (SET) of the voltage divider. This provides a power factor correction approach for active level control, and which can be implemented very simply and with low cost. It can be used for controlling lighting dimming.