Are there any LED bulbs that dim low similar to incandescent bulbs?
With my incandescent bulbs I can dim them down to next to nothing, but with my led bulbs they only dim down to maybe 20% brightness.
I find that my LIFX A19 bulbs and A19 minis dim very very low. Off course that is using a button controller and not an actual dimmer.
I should have said I have Lutron Caseta Dimmers, so I’m looking for non-smart (dumb) bulbs.
Are there any LED bulbs that dim low similar to incandescent bulbs?
Doubtful. The problem is the circuitry to power / control is also "dimmed" at some point the applied power is inadequate to power the circuitry.
It is possible to power LED's to very very low brightness but not with the type of circuitry in a bulb.
I have some Halo fixtures on a Zooz Zen24 that dim down to 5%. Anything lower than that and the change isn't noticeable. It's barely enough light to walk around.
Similar to the ones below, but I got mine a few years ago.
some confusion exists about this topic - dimmable, dimmable tunables and dimmable RGB. I like to call dimmable tunables (and have seen them called - dimmable - colortemp).
I originally tried low cost dimmable -tunables (the Color temp/CT) bulbs - so ended up a with Sylvania, LEDvance and OSram. Basically the same manufacturer. I had troubles with anything going below about 40% or so.
I did get 2 newer Osrams and they've tested postively - I can take them down to 1% and they are very solid but I still don't trust them since their from the sylvania family.
Lastly, I got some INNR bulbs - really generic and they've been rock solid. I've actually replaced some of the questionable older bulbs with these specifically so I can adjust them any way I want.
I use an app called circadian daylight - and it lets you use a very wide gamut of settings to simulate the outside daylight - so CT and dim setting are really important.
I believe that the newer color bulbs - the RGB units can do a color temp and they seem to be very good at low dim but my experience with them is not as much.
I don't use Caseta, but my newer dumb dimmers have a knob to adjust the lower limit on the dim setting. I have to remove the switch plate to access it. On my Zooz dimmer this setting is in the driver. Do the Caseta switches have anything similar that you can adjust?
Yes.
The problem is not the Caseta dimmer. The Caseta dimmer can dim an incandescent bulb down to next to zero.
The problem is that led bulbs (at least the ones I’m aware of) can’t be dimmed to an extremely low level.
Here's the Lutron documentation for adjusting low-end dimming trim on a Caseta dimmer.
https://www.casetawireless.com/documents/0301710%20-%20low%20end%20trim.pdf
You can also adjust high-end trim as well. Here is the much larger document showing all of the features.
https://www.casetawireless.com/Documents/0301710a_Caseta%20Advanced%20Inst.pdf
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There are some. My wife bought some bulbs for fixtures she wanted replaced, and I can dim them all the way to 1%. I am fairly impressed by them. The bulbs look like the Edison style bulbs, but they are LED. I don't know where she got them and I can't ask her right now. They are on GE JASCO dimmers with Neutrals. We have one set, however, in our Laundry room but there is no Neutral and I am using a Inovelli dimmer but I can only go to about 30%, before it starts flickering.
Besides the Halos, I've also got some C-Lite (Cree's contractor line) BR30s (3000K) that dim down to about 10% on a dumb dimmer. I've had them about a year, but haven't made up my mind if I'm a C-Lite fan or not. When I bought them, I couldn't find and standard Cree bulbs in the 3000K. Now they offer them in their standard line as well as the C-Lite. If I needed more, I'd likely go with the standard Cree line.
EDIT: for some reason, the C-Lite link redirects to the A19 size, but I use the BR30s.
I use Philips “warm glow” leds in the places where I have smart dimmers and dumb bulbs. I like that they dim low and get warmer white. They are the best approximation of an incandescent that I have used.
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Dimmers work by altering the shape of the waveform, not by reducing voltage levels. Because of this, dimmers have a maximum and minimum wattage level over which they can work. This may be a 10:1 ratio.
With incandescent bulbs pulling high wattage, the maximum wattage may be more of a concern than the minimum. If you have 8x 60 watt bulbs in a fixture, the total wattage may be 480 watts. Dimming them will not be an issue.
Since a 60 watt equivalent LED only pulls about 9 watts, the issue with dimming LEDs is that unless you have a lot of LED lights on the same fixture, you may run into issues with the minimum wattage of the dimmer.
Also, the human eye is not linear. Our eyes can detect variations in brightness of up to several billion times. Thus, no dimmer is going to come anywhere close to achieving what the eye can detect.
Also my favorite!
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