Dimmable LED recessed lights

So I did a dumb thing in my renovation and installed CREE new housing recessed LED lights. The problem is that they don’t dim — they flicker. My contractor hasn’t been able to resolve the problem so I’m looking for a great electrician with experience dealing with LED recessed lights. TIA for any recommendations.

karenanne9

in Electricians 9 years and 9 months ago

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bliz | 9 years and 8 months ago

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If the lights are listed as dimmable then it’s because you don’t have the right dimmer. The dimmer is easy to replace.

Augustiner | 9 years and 9 months ago

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Led lights also have to be specified ‘dimmable’, some are not

nyc_sport | 9 years and 9 months ago

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If you go to this page, look up your particular lights, it will tell you compatible dimming options. It does appear that some of these require 0-10V dimmers, which requires specialized wiring that your electrician presumably would have figured out. And while LEDs often contend that they can be used with traditional incandescent dimmers, they usually work better with MLV dimmers. http://www.cree.com/Lighting/Document-Library

aussieben | 9 years and 9 months ago

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Do you have the right sort of dimmer? Even the dimmable LEDs will only work with certain dimmers. If you’re talking about one-piece recessed LED housings (not just LED bulbs in regular housings), we looked into this pretty extensively when doing our renovation as I am pretty particular about quantity of light and my wife very particular about the colour (warmth) of the light. Many of the LEDs can tend towards the blue/cool end of the spectrum, but ours are nice and warm, even when dimming. Did take some searching though. We ended up going with a standard product from Lowes, I think they were the basic Utilitech brand. You shouldn’t need a specialist for this – go to Lowes, buy one, check which dimmers are compatible and buy one of those too, have any electrician install them, and then if it’s what you’re looking for go back and buy a bunch more…

mt_molehill | 9 years and 9 months ago

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Quality dimmable LEDs, even for recessed lighting, are pretty widely available now. What kind of base do your lamps have? Note: while the LEDs I’ve put in recently dim pretty well, there are two ways in which they are vastly inferior to old incandescents. 1\. the range of brightness is much narrower. They don’t get nearly as dim 2\. the color range doesn’t vary as it does with incandescents, which get a nice warm glow when they’re dimmed. LEDs stay the same blue/bright color, just dimmer. As a result, the dim lights often feel unpleasant, like insufficient lighting vs. the warm feeling you get from dimmed incandescent features. Maybe someone will figure out how to get that color/warmth range effect in an LED, but I haven’t found it.

daveinbedstuy | 9 years and 9 months ago

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I have all LED lights now in a house. Where there was a dimmer before, I had to install an LED rated dimmer which are more expensive. They dim fine with that. Also, some Led bulbs are rated dimmable and others are not.