Dimmer2: My LED lights don't dim very much..

[cjard 1]

Hi all.. I have my dimmer wired up to a fitting with 4 bulbs in

When I put halogen bulbs, dimming is very good, all the way down to a dim glow. When I put dimmable led lights however, even in the dimmest setting the lights are very bright. I look at the power consumption and it's reporting 5 watts total for 4 bulbs, so 1.25watts per bulb.. These LED are rated 5 watts each so if the power consumption report by the dimmer is accurate, does it mean that my lights are still very bright when running on quarter power simply because that is how they are manufactured.. Crazy bright?

At max brightness they use 22 watts

In the dimmer advanced settings I can see that the lower power percent is 11% and upper is 79%

Will I gain anything by changing these percentages, or is my problem of the lights being too bright even when on dimmest setting one of the bulbs just being too bright by design and I should buy some different bulb from another brand? Or is it because the power rating is too low (dimmer manual says min 50 watts, but my fitting can only get up to about 22 watts with 4 bulbs) for the dimmer to dim effectively, and if I add more bulbs to increase the power usage I will get more dim results?

Mainly I'm curious because when I turn the lights off I see them fade away to nothing, which makes me think they can go more dim than they are going at the moment..

[petergebruers 1,268]

I have some LED bulbs that can dim as low as a halogen (Philips Warm Glow). But also some IKEA dimmable LED that "perceptually" only dim down to 1/3 maybe 1/4 of the maximum brightness (highly unscientific test). With either Dimmer 1 or 2, with or without bypass.

You can't destroy the dimmer (or bulb) by toying with those parameters. But the bulb may fail to start or become unstable. Also try Parameter 30 "Load control mode". If you don't get better results, setting parameter 13 to 1 will "auto calibrate" again and 20 seconds later you'll be back at automatic settings.

[Guest azevenhuizen]

I have modified all my lower dimm values to as low as 3% for some leds. For others 10% was enough.

When  going to low (eg 1%) I noticed problems in startup to last know dim value.

You can make a settings for this to (parameter 19), but I agree with Peter, if you set dim to low and the led does not start anymore, you might damage the light when using this level.

[cjard 1]

I'll try some other brands of bulbs then, because these bulbs (LAP, sold by screwfix in the uk - screwfix generally sell good gear, but LAP aren't a renowned brand - I think they might be screwfix's own) re kinda like you ones; they look like they only dim down by a third. Main thing is screwfix have a good returns policy!

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