Best Bulbs for Lutron Caseta

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Lutron Caseta is well known for its high-quality smart lighting switches. Being able to dim your lights is a bonus, but many bulbs, even though they work with your switch, can buzz, flicker, and vibrate, leaving you with an unpleasant experience. There are many manufacturers of bulbs and just as many standards. Thankfully, smart switch companies like Lutron regularly test bulbs to provide you with the latest research, helping you find the right bulbs for your home lighting system.

There are many standards that bulb manufacturers need to meet to produce bulbs. However, these standards can vary and leave some bulbs underperforming and providing compatibility issues with certain switches and systems. Below, we will look at some of the most common bulbs on the market and narrow down which ones will work best with your Lutron Caseta.

What Light Bulbs Work with Lutron Caseta?

Companies like Lutron Caseta are always testing bulbs to ensure that your experience is satisfactory. With that said, to find the best bulbs for Lutron Caseta, visit the manufacturer’s website and use their compatibility tool to help find one that tested well with their smart dimming switch. Simply choose your dimmer’s model.  

However, when you open their compatibility tool to search for a bulb that works well with your dimmer switch, you will first need to accept a disclaimer before continuing. In part, the disclaimer mentions that “Bulb manufacturers can modify their bulbs at any time, without notice to Lutron.”

This can leave a smart switch owner frustrated. Finding a compatible bulb, then finding that the bulb tested well by Lutron, only to have been changed, affecting performance, can be frustrating.

Let us look at some of the bulb types that can be used with your smart switch and considerations when using them:

Bulb TypeBulb Facts to Consider with Lutron Caseta
Incandescent BulbsThese bulbs provide the lowest efficiency but work best with dimmers. Their lights are warm and provide good color, but they need to be replaced most often.
Screw-in CFL BulbsWhile more efficient than incandescent, these bulbs are slow to turn on, can flicker, provide harsh lighting, and are not easily disposable due to mercury content.
Halogen BulbsProviding a lighting experience closest to incandescent with higher efficiency, they deliver a quality dimming experience without the negative experience found with CFL bulbs.
Screw-in LED BulbsLED bulbs provide the highest efficiency for bulbs of the screw-in type. However, manufacturing standards vary greatly, and dimming performance can vary widely.
Linear Fluorescent BulbsWith the proper ballast, such as the Lutron ballast, which is highly rated, these bulbs provide excellent dimming performance and quality like screw-in type bulbs.

Best LED Bulbs for Lutron Caseta

After reading the bulb types that work with Lutron Caseta, it is easy to conclude that many people choose LED bulbs for their homes. Long-lasting bulbs that have excellent efficiency are the reason for this choice. However, with the questionable dimming performance that varies, you will need to know which bulbs have performed well with the Lutron Caseta:

  • Philips LED bulbs rate extremely high with Lutron Caseta. Multiple types of bulbs list as five stars when using the compatibility tool.
  • GE also has a wide range of compatible bulbs that provide high ratings in the flicker, noise, and dimmable categories.
  • EcoSmart is also worth a look, with several bulbs rating as five stars as well.
  • Keystone and Sylvania are mentioned in the tool, but only with one offering each.

You can click on each bulb in the compatibility tool to get an in-depth chart showing detailed specs for each model number. The specs include the wattage equivalent, the bulb’s actual wattage, color temperature, lumen output, and the base type.

Best LED Bulbs for Lutron Caseta Dimmer

If you are looking for specific performance for dimming using LED bulbs and your Lutron Caseta smart switch, the compatibility tool has a specific dimmer rating for each bulb.

Alongside each bulb’s star rating, you will find an information button to click. This will provide you with the results of the dimming performance Lutron found in its testing.

The testing results include meeting standards of no flicker down to 10% of dimming, the lack of buzzing for most individual’s hearing range, and quality dimming down to 10%. (It is mentioned that you might need to adjust the low-end trim on the dimmer to avoid any issues.)

Conclusion

Ensuring the best performance for many bulbs, Lutron has earned its place as one of the best smart lighting switches on the market. Considering how many bulbs are available for today’s home, Lutron Caseta has created a strong compatibility tool that can help you make the best decision for purchasing bulbs.

Of course, all of the bulbs mentioned above are great options to start with if you’re still unsure which product is best for your Lutron Caseta system.

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