Flutterby™! : LED downlights 2014-01-13 01:29:35.718782+00

LED downlights

2014-01-13 01:29:35.718782+00 by meuon 2 comments

Nancy and I just put in the 2nd set of LED Retrofit Downlights in the kitchen. We replaced the 4 in the dining room last week as an experiment, liked the results and replaced 4 more in the kitchen. We already were using Lutron dimmers, which worked well. But for the dining room I used a Lutron Maestro dimmer, a newer dimmer specifically for CFL and LED lights, which seems to work better with the LED lights. It has a more linear dimming range. We were playing with the idea of adding more lights (pendants and/or track) to brighten up the kitchen, but now the whole area is covered in a brighter and more even light. They were easy to put in, although I cut off the 'Edison light bulb screw adapter' and wired them direct with wire nuts for a less kludgy installation. More and better light for a lot less power, and they look great in a contemporary house. Side note: They seal to the ceiling, no heat loss through the old light fixtures.

We plan on slowly replacing all of the lights in the house with these.

I've installed LEDs in almost all of the fixtures in my house, using the Cree bulbs. Works really well. I just installed a few Leviton "SureSlide" dimmers and was disappointed - they work, but the dimmest setting is still too bright. It's like they dim from full brightness down to half brightness, but what I really want is the option of 15% brightness. Do the Lutron dimmers have the same problem? I'm not sure whether it's something to do with the LED-compatible dimming circuit or whether this is simply a limitation of these particular dimmers.

I have four remaining fluorescents in the house, cans embedded in the kitchen ceiling, and I'm planning to swap them out eventually for LEDs like the downlights you linked. Once that's done the only remaining non-LED lighting in the house will be the halogen lamp over my piano and a pair of old-style filament bulbs that glow dimly on the mantel to make the room feel warmer.

The Lutron Maestro gets them pretty dim. My "calibrated" eyeballs might call it 15%, but it might be 20%. It's a very dim lighting level for a dining room. It does it without the flicker the older (more normal) Lutron causes at the dimmer levels. As the older dimmer controls the kitchen, and we like it usually at full brightness, not an issue. I put the Lutron Maestro in the dining room because there was no dimmer for the "can" lights.