Electrical lighting question - flickering lights

I moved into a place with a ceiling fan/light unit in the bedroom. There is a switch on the wall that turns the power to the unit on and off, The fan on/off and speed, and the light on/off and brightness are controlled individually with a remote control. I had to replace the bulbs recently, and I tried some of the old compact flourescent bulbs I had lying around. When the lights are turned off with the remote, the CFL bulbs still flicker faintly. When I unscrew one of the bubs, the other flickers twice as fast.

What is going on?

It’s trying to scare you off. It’s like making yourself appear bigger to a bear.

The dimmer circuitry uses current passed through the bulb. That current is shared, so it takes longer to charge up two bulbs then it does one. The only way to stop this type of annoyance is to use a better dimmer, or put in one incandescent lamp.

– or a better CF bulb. Expensive CF (and LED) bulbs generally have better power-supply isolation and don’t flicker visibly.

Don’t you need a different type of dimmer with LEDs?

Not necessarily, but often. Better quality LED lamps will dim just fine on a standard phase-cut dimmer. But the cheap ones will misbehave in a variety of ways.

The OP says he has CFL bulbs, not LEDs.

As a general rule, traditional dimmers from the incandescent era & CFLs don’t get along real well.

If the bulbs don’t say dimmable on the box they aren’t. And can’t / shouldn’t be used at all on items like remote control fans where often there isn’t an actual physical on/off switch for the lamps; the dimmer just dims as close to zero as it can. Which eats CFLs.