My dinning room had an on/off switch for the light which made it impossible to have romantic dinners there - the light was either too bright or off. So I decided to install a dimmer. Being energy conscious and progressive, I wanted to install a dimmer for compact fluorescent lights. I bought a dimmer for compact flourescent lights, the Lutron dimmer with the designer or decora switch, and the slide control to adjust the intensity of the light. I also installed 60W equivalent compact flourescent light bulbs that were recommended by Home Depot as being dimmable. After installing it, I found that it would dim the lights from 100% brightness down to 80% brightness - still nowhere near dim enough for a romantic dinner. When I went to Lowes, the guy there said that I just happened to get a bad switch - try another one. I did - same result. I went back to Home Depot - the guy there was adamant that they do work, so I tried another - same result. I made very sure that I had the polarity of the switch right, checking which was the hot lead with a volt meter before installing the switch.

Is there a trick to get the compact flourescent light switches and dimmable compact flourescent lights to work?