The best candelabra LED bulbs

Candelabra bulbs live in fittings chosen for how they look, and they generally get bought the same way - by shape and finish, with the specification treated as an afterthought. That works until the room is dim, or the six bulbs you bought turn out to be a different white from the two you replaced last year.

The E12 base is the whole category: a 12 millimeter screw thread, about half the diameter of a standard E26. It turns up in chandeliers, small sconces, ceiling fan kits, decorative lamps and porch lanterns.

Three things separate a good candelabra bulb from a bad one, and none of them is the shape.

Satco 5.5W vintage Edison B11, 90 CRI - the pick. 500 lumens at 2700K with a published CRI of 90. Most candelabra bulbs publish no CRI at all, and this format usually hangs over a dining table where color rendering decides whether food and faces look right.
Cons: enclosed-fixture suitability is not stated; it draws slightly more watts than rivals for the same 500 lumens; and the decorative B11 shape is wrong for fittings with small shades over each bulb.

Luxrite E12, 2700K - for sealed and outdoor fittings. 500 lumens, dimmable, UL listed, rated 15,000 hours - and rated for both enclosed fixtures and wet locations, which almost nothing in this format is. If your chandelier has glass shades over each bulb, or the fitting is a covered porch lantern, this is the one that will not cook itself.
Cons: CRI is not published; the HX10.5 glass shape suits some fittings and not others; and it is sold in large packs, which suits a chandelier and wastes money on a single sconce.

A 2200K filament bulb - when the bulb is the decoration. 700 lumens at 2200K with CRI 80+, for exposed fittings where atmosphere beats task light.
Cons: 2200K is far too warm to light a room, and 80+ CRI is ordinary. The full trade-off is in vintage Edison LED bulbs.

Philips Ultra Definition A19 - for larger fittings taking E26. 800 lumens, 2700K, CRI 95. Included because a number of fittings people call chandeliers actually take standard bulbs, and where they do, this is the better light.
Cons: physically too large for most candelabra arms.

Buy the whole set at once. Manufacturers change the exact tone of 2700K between production runs, and in a fitting where every bulb is visible next to every other, a slight mismatch is obvious. Replacing one bulb in a six-bulb chandelier a year later almost never matches.

Buy dimmable even if you have no dimmer yet. The price difference is small, and a chandelier is the fitting in a house most likely to end up on a dimmer - see best dimmer switches for LEDs and best dimmable LED bulbs.

Check whether the shades are sealed. Small glass shades over each bulb count as enclosures, and enclosed fittings cook ordinary LEDs - the mechanism is in best LED bulbs for enclosed fixtures. Open at the top, and you generally do not need the rating.

Never mix warm and cool in one fitting. It reads as a fault rather than a choice, every time. Vary color temperature between fittings if you want variety, never within one.

The fixture side of this - sizing, hanging height, spacing - is in dining room chandeliers.