For the first time I've been trying out a few relatively inexpensive dimmable leds from the likes of home depot, lowes, etc.

I gotta say the dimming experience is just so much nicer and consistent with a regular incandescent. Some examples... when you hit full on and it ramps up brightness the effect is nice on an incandescent. Also great when you hit off and it ramps down. With the led the ramp up is almost nonexistent.. just jumps to full on. The ramp down is better but doesn't match an incandescent. Also with the led they just don't dim as low as incandescent(even with the low end trim adjusted on the Lutron dimmer). With the led I notice on the low end of dim the dim level isn't always exactly the same either. So I am curious if really good mid to high end dimmable led's still exhibit these traits or if there are ones out there that mock an incandescent extremely well. The problem with most of these bulbs is they are packaged so its damn near impossible to just try one out quick... and get it back in the box looking unaltered to return it. Also color temperatures seem to vary quite a bit despite what box states.

So I wanted to ask those who have good experience with dimmable leds what they recommend. I do know Lutron has a compatibility chart that just states it'll work not how good of quality you can expect out the experience with the bulbs. I'm looking for a brand that has some variation in sizes of bulbs too. For example on the lights above a medicine cabinet shorter bulbs look better as they don't stick past the glass pieces on each fixture.

Good luck. I have found no good info on this subject.

...why not just use incandescent or halogen? In 5 more years maybe there will be a good alternative :)

Philips has some great LED replacement lamps available that have great dimming properties compared to other LED lamps on the market.

There is no way to simulate the look at feel of incandescent dimming with LED product, however they have come a long way in the last few years. Philips has some new lamps that they call Warm Glow coming to market which simulate the colour temperature shift that occurs when incandescent or halogen light sources are dimmed.

I replaced all my lighting with LED lamps in my own home with Maestro CL dimmers and a combination of CREE (Type A lamps and 6" trims) and Philips (interior and exterior floods).

Here's a quick rundown of my own place:

1. About a 10% fail rate on the CREE lamps, either humming, blinking, or full failure. The lamps that did fail, Home Depot exchanged no questions asked.
2. 0% fail rate on the Philips as of now
3. The dimming gets about as low as I want or need (~10%), however some may want lower (dedicated theater room)
4. The LED ramp rate (up and down) on the Maestro CL dimmers works beautifully with both the CREE and Philips lamps. I did program every dimmer and adjust the ramp rates in the advanced programming modes.
5. 2700k lamps have an awesome color for both brands and are consistent throughout my house
6. 4100k lamps for exterior were surprisingly bright and excellent dimming as well

Every job I do now I spec LED, for me it's so close to incandescent and worth the energy savings and life expectancy. I like the CREE recessed trims (can also recommend Lithonia) but I'd use Philips on everything else after my test-drive.

I have those Philips two-stage LED bulbs installed in some floor lamps and they definitely do not dim smoothly. There is a definite jump point between the low and higher color temperature.

Why don't you guys use the Lutron LED Selection tool?
[Link: lutron.com]

The Lutron guys bought a bunch of bulbs, tested and reported on them.

If you have bulb you want to use you can tell them and they'll test it for you.

They'll tell you max brightness, lowest dimness and trim settings needed for all of the Lutron load modulators.

It prints out a report card for each lamp.

I hear ya. I was just trying to be energy efficient. In 5 years we should have some decent stuff out there I imagine. They are now at the price point where they pay themselves off in just a couple years. I like the GE bright sticks a lot. 3 packs for 9.99 and a nice color temp in warm and the daylight ones. They just aren't dimmable which sucks. [Link: homedepot.com]

Anyways on the ones i'm trying now (cheap utilitech bulbs from home depot/lowes behave pretty decent [Link: lowes.com])
once you adjust the low end trim so you can dim them down real low.

I wouldn't exactly call the color temp warm though. Its much whiter then an incandescent.

this is interesting. i'll keep my eye out.

[Link: usa.philips.com] are these the ones you have.. the warm glow ones that were mentioned above?
they seem to review well [Link: amazon.com]

they seem pretty cool. This just might fit the bill for what i'm looking for.


and that Lutron tool is more powerful then I realized. thanks for the link

Those are the ones I have. I'm using them with Caseta dimmers and they require a small amount of trim on the low end.

They do not dim as smoothly as the youtube video and that knob dimmer shows. They have a slow-ish ramp up and then when the second stage kicks in the pause slightly and then kind of "grow" into the room.

They work best when you set a light level and leave it but if you like the smooth gradient dimming of an incandescent they don't look like that.

The cool color temp is very nice at low levels. I like the Cree lamps ($5 at Home Depot) in Lutron dimmers but their color temperature stays the same at all levels and it doesn't look right.

The report cards are great on lutron.com/led but most of them are a few generations old and the model numbers are not accurate any more.

Different LED lamps will respond differently to various dimmers as you can see from the report cards so it's always best to test before you buy the lamps for your whole house.

I would always recommend a dimmer with a neutral connection which could be why Lowhz had mixed results with the lamps on his Caseta system.

We have thousands of Philips lamps on our Lutron Homeworks systems in the field with good results over all.

I've got Halo retrofit LED's running off of an older Lutron Grafic Eye and they actually work great. Ramp up and down is much the same as it was with the old incandescent bulbs, and dimming seems to work just fine.

Also using some of the old URC tabletop dimmers with CFL's. Won't dim for diddly, but I set the dim adjustment to the last step and they work fine as a on/off light switch. Sadly this wont work with any LED bulb I've tried.

I'm gonna pick one up and see what I think.

I tried several different ones in my kitchen. Feit, Philips, GE, Cree, etc. The dimming was terrible, some brands would not turn off entriely, some would blink. The only ones that work great in my kitchen are the Eco-smart BR30 LED's from Home Depot. The ramp on, is instant. Ramps to about 15%, then goes off. If I just hold the dim button it stops at 15% and won't go any further. I can turn them off by press the paddle on the dimmer.

LED's are a pain....I am probably going to move back to the energy efficient Halogens.

Sorry, it's late and I don't have the time to read this whole thing, but wanted to propose an alternate, great, but clumsy solution.

We did a CEDIA award-winning theater a couple of years ago where we used LED lighting for everything: ceiling spots, step lights, ancillary effects lighting.

We used Lutron magnetic circuit dimmers along with an LED implementation that I don't see available anywhere: we used 12 volt bulbs and LED tape. Each Lutron output went to a NEMA box behind the wall (false wall hiding conduits, acoustic treatment, etc, that went all around the room). In each NEMA box is a 10 volt output transformer, a full wave bridge, and an electrolytic capacitor. That's it: a dumb brute force DC power supply.

Dimming is incredibly smooth until you get to the last couple of steps, which look, visually, as though they are about 5%, half that, and off. This is much better than any other LED dimmer I've ever seen.

Dimmed LEDs that power drivers on the input have the problem that the dimming voltage cannot run the driver when it's very low, so the driver quits working. I haven't heard of any way around that. Our approach was not to use drivers at all.

The only real planning needed is to be sure that the amperage of the 10 volt transformer is sufficient for the load. We just got back from modifying the system of the first client's brother. We had about 90 feet of steplight LEDs on each side and a 10 amp transformer with 6800 mfd cap on each side. Full voltage out of the Lutron gave us 12.6VDC at the power supply when under load.