Dimmers and low wattage LED 'bulbs'

[jpdw]

I have been replacing some of our bulbs with LEDs and have got round to a small room with a dimmer and 40w bulb. To replace this I have a 5w dimmable LED but all the dimmers I can find state 10w minimum load...

It seems the market is still making products for high consumption traditional bulbs and halogens!

Does anyone know of products that have lower min load? I.e 5w

[toscal]

There are some from the like of Lutron. But in general at the moment we are going to have to wait for dimmer manufacturers to catch up with lighting tech.
Some dimmers have a small adjustment screw to tweak the min load, so it might be worth a look. another option is to go for a 0-10V system if you are using low voltage LED bulbs.
I did try one of our dimmable 7w bulbs in a dimmable table lamp, and the dimmer circuit burnt out after 3 days of 5 hours per day, the dimmer switch actually melted.

[jpdw]

I had a look at the Lutron range but still all of theirs (that I could find anyway) seemed to say 10w was the minimum load.
As you say, maybe I need to wait for the manufacturers of dimmers to catch up with the manufacturers of LEDs. I assume the market is focussed on situations where people are replacing a dozen halogens set into ceilings with similar LEDs -- ie so the min wattage is still above 10w.

Presumably this isn't so much a technical challenge as there not yet being a market for it. In which case I wonder if the other way to solve this is "simply" to make a dimmer circuit but designed for the low wattage I need.... (like I need +1 project right now...)

[toscal]

the only way I know of at the moment is to use a 0-10v dimming led transformer, these are normally used for rgb leds but can be used as a three channel LED dimmer. But these will only work on 12V dimmable LED bulbs.