I have just returned from another Fabulous Las Vegas Lightfair - the biggest annual lighting trade show in the US. Three years ago I returned from Lightfair on a rampage. It seemed that everyone was showing off their "new" LED product, and every one of those products was failing at everything that matters to lighting designers: glare, color, flicker... Then last year I saw improvement. The story wasn't just, "hey we have LED" but rather, "our LED is better because of its color" and "we have improved the optics by..." Thank goodness the manufacturers have continued this trend. There were some LED products that actually made me hopeful. BUT...

This year my favorite question to ask became, "What do you mean by that?" 

I was repeatedly told, "Our LED fixture is fully dimmable." If someone says something is fully dimmable, I think that should mean FULLY dimmable, as in it can dim from zero to 100% without flickering and can be switched on or off at any point along that dimming curve without flickering. We are NOT there yet, folks. None of the products I saw had that capability. None of them. But I was told at least 20 times that various products were fully dimmable.

What does that mean?

Sometimes they meant the product would dim down to only 10% before turning itself off or beginning to flicker. In the best case scenario they meant it would dim to 1% and then off. I know that is close to full dimming and most of the time that is good enough. But that is fluorescent dimming at its best. That is not equivalent to incandescent dimming. The language with fluorescent dimming has always been 10%, 5%, 1%. I don't recall it being described as fully dimmable. I don't think LED should be described as fully dimmable yet, either. But I am still hopeful it will get there. Don't settle for less. And don't forget to ask, "What do you mean by that?" until fully dimmable truly means fully dimmable!