[graemep]

The problem is that consumers usually cannot know this about a particular light (or a lot more) at the point of purchase, so even if you are willing to pay a premium for this you cannot.

I would pay a premium for longer life, and at least in some cases (e.g. lights I read by) for better quality. How do I do so? I would love to be pointed at sources of better ones (in the UK).

[dvdkon]

In the EU, lights have to be sold with a mandatory energy efficiency label. A lesser-known component of this is that this label includes a link to a standardised datasheet, which includes things like flicker metrics, CRI, chromaticity, and a measurement of the spectrum.

It doesn't fully quantify the light, but it's good enough to distinguish trash or even passable lights from actually good ones.

[Rebelgecko]

tl;dr: Just buy Philips UltraEfficient (I think these are roughly equivalent to the infamous "Dubai Bulbs"[1]) or Ultra Definition bulbs. They cost a little bit more but will probably pay for themselves over the years.

Buy name brands with a history of putting out decent bulbs instead of the Amazon alphabetsoup brands that won't be around in 5 years (although TBF some of my cheap BogAo bulbs are still going strong after 8 years). You can get a good feel for the light's "quality" by looking at the CRI and color temperature.

For CRI, anything 90+ is good.

For temperature, IMO around 3000k is the sweet spot. go higher if you want sterile operating room vibes or lower if you want super yellow/orange cozy hobbit hole vibes.

[1]: https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-li...