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I have just replaced lower watt LED ceiling lights with new, higher wattage LED ones. I have discovered that I'm using a Lutron TG600P toggle with sliding dimmer that is meant for incandescent bulbs. The LED's work fine and are dimmable.

What I want to do is to control the dimmer to a lower range - with the higher rated bulb the low end is a little brighter than I would like.

Is there a another settable control on the Lutron other than the sliding control to lower the low end brightness?

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  • Thanks to all for the input. Well before going mainstream, I replaced a br30 65wt LED with a new 75wt br40 LED. The equivalent increased up from 9.5 to 11.0 but the brightness also increased substantially. Would sliding the luminance to a lessor setting also lower the equivalent rating? I decided to not tempt fate and to replace the switch with an LED rating. There is a range setting for the dimmer that fills the need I am looking for. Thanks again for helping with the decision process. Fred
    – Fred Demarest
    May 17, 2021 at 22:24

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This is often the problem with incandescent dimmers used with LED lights. The lowest setting for an incandescent dimmer is too much when used with an LED bulb.

There are no adjustments you can make to increase the dimming on the actual switch. There are many types of LED bulbs out there so you could experiment with different types until you find the one that fits your needs. You could also replace the dimmer with an LED dimmer. They will lower the brightness on an LED bulb more than the incandescent dimmer will do.

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    Good call on experimenting with bulbs, but that last line should read "They may lower the brightness..."; many of the latest bulbs now work much better with older dimmers than those of just a few years ago, so you may not recover a lot of margin with a new dimmer, depending on the bulbs.
    – dandavis
    May 15, 2021 at 20:03
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TL;DR

You need an LED dimmer or put back the incandescents.

From your perspective everything is "working" but you are actively harming your LED bulbs. Traditional dimmers work by reducing voltage so the incandescent filament gets less hot.

An LED bulb is a sensitive piece of electronic and you are effectively creating a brown-out situation for your bulbs. I hope you enjoy replacing your bulbs every few months.

Think of it this way:

How would your T.V. or computer like it if it was on a dimmer which that messed with the voltage?

Can an incandescent light dimmer be used to dim LED lights?

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    "Dimmable LEDs" are not harmed by traditional dimmers. If OP is using non-dimmable LEDs they might be damaged as you describe. But traditional dimmers often reduce power supply to about 30% at their lowest setting, at which point incandescents produce much less than 30% brightness but LEDs can produce whatever their manufacturers decide ... maybe actually 30%.
    – jay613
    May 17, 2021 at 15:12
  • For illustration, I have a Smart dimmer that allows you to change the dimming profile so the full range of controlling the switch will produce whatever range of power output is suitable for your LED. 0 to 100, 30 to 100, whatever. I bought some dimmable LEDs that dim to 5% brightness at 30% power .... anticipating traditional dimmer switches. This Smart switch allows you to compensate for such design decisions.
    – jay613
    May 17, 2021 at 15:13
  • "Traditional dimmers work by reducing voltage" - this is not true, they use SCRs or similar means to implement a basic PWM scheme.
    – whatsisname
    Oct 14, 2021 at 23:48
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You cannot do what you want with that dimmer switch and possibly not with that light. Some Smart switches allow you to program the dimmer range so the bottom end might be at 5% rather than say 30%. I happen to know Honeywell Z-Wave switches have that feature. Not a specific recommendation but you can experiment with one to see if your new lights respond the way you want.

The problem you have is that incandescent bulbs produce almost no light when dimmers drop too low, so some dimmers cannot drop below a certain threshhold that is appropriate for incandescents. On the other hand, LEDs can respond to input AC voltages any way their designers design. What you probably have is a dimmer that is a maybe 30% at its low end and a dimmable LED designed to respond linearly from 0 to 100%. There are dimmers that can produce that range. There are some marketed-as-dimmable LEDs that will not respond linearly to any kind of input control. Hopefully not yours.

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  • LED dimming also works completely differently than incandescent dimming. It might be an entire set of LEDs that are simply dimmer, because LEDs don't actually "dim" like you would expect them to.
    – Nelson
    Oct 15, 2021 at 9:50

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