Found out most dimmer switches won't work with LED tape lights the hard way

I put in 6 dimmers on a kitchen remodel last month before realizing the Lutron ones I grabbed are only rated for 150W of LED, and my tape runs were pushing 200W each. Has anybody else had to swap out dimmers mid-job because the specs didn't match the load?

2 comments

2 Comments

robin48913d agoMost Upvoted

Yeah I read somewhere those Lutron ratings are way conservative for LED stuff.

miles27713d ago

That 150W rating on Lutron dimmers is usually for the whole circuit, not per switch. I've run four separate 100W tape runs off a single 600W RA2 dimmer in my own basement with zero issues. You might actually be overcomplicating things by splitting everything into six different dimmers. A single high-load dimmer with a power booster or repeater would handle your 200W runs fine if you wired it right. The specs are conservative for a reason, and Lutron especially builds in a lot of headroom you're not accounting for.