Old office building rewire showed me how much LED dimmers have changed in 10 years

I did a full rewire on a 1970s office building downtown last spring, and the before and after on the lighting was crazy. The old dimmers would flicker bad with even a half dozen LEDs, even the ones labeled as compatible. After swapping in some of the newer digital dimmers from Leviton (about $22 each at the supply house), everything smoothed out instantly on a 30-pack of bulbs. Has anyone else noticed how much better the newer dimmers handle mixed loads than that stuff we were putting in a decade ago?

2 comments

2 Comments

cooper.phoenix22d ago

Dimmer technology hasn't changed that much, it's just the manufacturers finally got around to labeling things correctly for LED loads. Those old dimmers you called "incompatible" still work fine with incandescent bulbs, and most of the flicker problems come from people using cheap no-name bulbs, not the dimmer itself. Throwing more expensive components at a system that works just fine with the right bulbs is just unnecessary cost.

john_cooper22d ago

My last commercial job had the exact same night and day difference with the new digital dimmers.