Talk abouit the end of CFL light bulbs...

[Kaith]

CFLs typically have a rated service life of 6,000–15,000 hours,The life of a CFL is significantly shorter if it is turned on and off frequently. In the case of a 5-minute on/off cycle the lifespan of some CFLs may be reduced to that of incandescent light bulbs. The U.S. Energy Star program suggests that fluorescent lamps be left on when leaving a room for less than 15 minutes to mitigate this problem. CFLs produce less light later in their lives than when they are new. The light output decay is exponential, with the fastest losses being soon after the lamp is first used. By the end of their lives, CFLs can be expected to produce 70–80% of their original light output. The response of the human eye to light is logarithmic. One photographic "f-stop" reduction represents a halving in actual light, but is subjectively quite a small change. A 20–30% reduction over many thousands of hours represents a change of about half an f-stop. So, presuming the illumination provided by the lamp was ample at the beginning of its life, such a difference will be compensated for by the eyes

 

[MNgopher]

KD0AXS, if that's as low as your dimmer will go on one bulb, you definitely need a different dimmer. They make dimmer switches that are meant to deal with LED's. I've swapped a few in our house.

That being said, my luck with dimming LED's in circuits or fixtures with multiple LED lamps is poor. I keep getting a flicker. On our kitchen table, the way around it is to run one incandescent bulb in the circuit - seems to clean up the noise that causes the flicker (or at least buries it so the switch and LED bulbs don't notice it...)

And before anyone says it, I've tried Cree, GE, FEIT, Phillips, and EcoSamrt(?) and they all do it to one extent or another...

Love the LED's but dimming is still an issue.