{"id":3792,"date":"2018-11-29T12:56:04","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T17:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisa.rushworth.us\/?p=3792"},"modified":"2018-11-30T14:59:45","modified_gmt":"2018-11-30T19:59:45","slug":"best-dimming-light-bulbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/?p=3792","title":{"rendered":"Best Dimming Light Bulbs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>We purchased a house full of Z-wave dimmers (Leviton VRMX-1LZ and DZSM-1LZ) as a Christmas season special from Leviton two years ago. We were really happy to have dimmers throughout the house &#8212; we could use the existing lighting as nightlights, have movie nights with a little pathway lighting &#8230; and then we installed a few dimmers and realized the bulbs dimmed. But not DIM dimmed. It was a massive bummer, and significantly diminished the couple hundred bucks we&#8217;d dropped on these smart dimmers.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We even called Leviton &amp; got a <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"We even called Leviton &amp; got a paper they publish with how different bulbs dim with their various dimmers. Except all of the bulbs that went down to 1 or 2% were discontinued. Another bummer! (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.leviton.com\/fr\/docs\/Dimmer_Bulb_Compatibility_Chart.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">paper they publish with how different bulbs dim with their various dimmers<\/a>. And realized that all of the bulbs that went down to 1 or 2% were discontinued. Another bummer! The paper is updated periodically, but even the early 2018 iteration failed to yield any in-production well-dimming bulbs. <br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the summer, I came across a review of various dimmable LED light bulbs. The guy had an integrating sphere rigged up and was measuring output and colour &#8212; seemed like he put a lot of effort into it (and I&#8217;d LOVE to find that write-up again!). His write-up indicated that Home Depot&#8217;s &#8220;house brand&#8221; bulbs, EcoSmart, dimmed down to basically nothing. I added EcoSmart 60W bulbs to my &#8220;next time you&#8217;re at Home Depot&#8221; list <em>and <\/em>finally remembered to pick them up in September. Except there were two types &#8212; plastic ones and glass ones that can be used in closed fixtures. The plastic ones dimmed well &#8212;\u00a0<em>way<\/em>\u00a0better than any of the Cree, Phillips, or Lighting Science bulbs we&#8217;d tried. But the glass ones &#8212; they dimmed to the point of being off. We had to go through and change what the dimmers consider zero because these bulbs were TOO dim. And they didn&#8217;t hum, buzz, or flicker. I was thrilled &#8212; swapped out the downstairs hallway bulbs with these glass EcoSmart LEDs and the light fixtures have become nightlights.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wanted to get bulbs for the other hallway, bedrooms, and bathrooms. So I ordered the bulbs online &amp; they showed up. Replaced one set of bedroom bulbs, dimmed them &#8230; and they&#8217;re about on par with the Cree bulbs we had. Huh? Upon investigation, while the bulbs we got delivered had the exact same part number, they had a different UPC. And a different product code above the UPC. Even odder &#8212; the energy draw and estimated annual cost were different. Apparently there are different revisions of the bulbs, and the 02 revision doesn&#8217;t dim any better than every other bulb out there.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We returned the bulbs and checked the light bulb aisle at the store for any with UPC 693690563636 and product code\u00a0ABA19A60WESD01 &#8212; and found a bunch on the shelves. They also had the 02 revision\u00a0<em>and<\/em>\u00a0a 03 revision. Since the 01 ones were a known quantity, we bought them. And they dim down to nothing! It&#8217;s been just about two years, but the dimmers we&#8217;ve put in are finally PERFECT.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We purchased a house full of Z-wave dimmers (Leviton VRMX-1LZ and DZSM-1LZ) as a Christmas season special from Leviton two years ago. We were really happy to have dimmers throughout the house &#8212; we could use the existing lighting as nightlights, have movie nights with a little pathway lighting &#8230; and then we installed a &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,11],"tags":[698,700,699],"class_list":["post-3792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-automation","category-miscellaneous","tag-dimmers","tag-ecosmart","tag-lighting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3792"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3802,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3792\/revisions\/3802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}