The best color-selectable LED bulbs

A color-selectable bulb is several bulbs in one shell. Inside are separate groups of LEDs, each producing one color temperature, and a small switch that decides which group is powered. Slide it to 2700K and you have a soft white bulb; slide it to 5000K and you have a daylight bulb. It is one fixed color at a time - the bulb does not blend between settings or drift during the day.

That sounds like a minor convenience, and for most people it is the answer to a specific problem: you have read the color temperature chart, you know the difference between 2700K and 4000K on paper, and you still cannot tell which one your kitchen wants. A photo of a room at 3000K tells you very little about your room, with your paint, your countertop and your window. A selectable bulb moves the decision from the store aisle to the room itself, where it belongs.

It also solves the problem of buying bulbs one pack at a time. Retail names like "soft white" and "bright white" are not standards, which is how a room ends up with three slightly different whites in it. Five bulbs from one selectable pack, all set to the same value, match each other by construction.

Every bulb here offers at least five settings from 2700K to 5000K, so the range alone does not separate them. These do, in this order.

1. Where the switch is, against where the bulb lives. Most selectable bulbs put the switch on the bulb itself, set before you screw it in. That is fine in a table lamp and a nuisance in a ceiling fixture you need a ladder to reach. A bulb you can re-set from the wall switch is worth more in exactly those places.
2. Enclosed-fixture rating. A sealed globe or a flush mount traps heat, and a bulb not rated for it runs hotter and can fail early. This is the criterion most often ignored and most often decisive - one of the major-brand bulbs below is open-fixture only. Background is in best LED bulbs for enclosed fixtures.
3. Lumens for the job. Color does not make a room brighter; lumens do. Two bulbs at 800 lumens give the same quantity of light at 2700K and at 5000K. We note the published output of each and which rooms it can light on its own.
4. Dimming. A selectable bulb that cannot dim is a bad fit for a bedroom or a dining room, where the evening setting matters most. Dimmability is published for every pick, and one is not dimmable at all.
5. CRI. Color rendering decides whether wood, food and skin look right under whichever white you choose. CRI 90 is our floor for a first pick; one bulb here is CRI 80 and is included for output, not color quality. The case for high CRI is in best high-CRI LED bulbs.

We did not test these bulbs in a lab. Every figure below is the manufacturer's published specification, or the retailer listing where the maker publishes none, and the page it came from is in the sources at the foot of this page. Where two sources disagree, we say so rather than choosing the flattering number.

Prices move daily, so we do not print them in the text. As a bracket, all five sit in the everyday price range of ordinary LED multipacks, well below what smart bulbs cost per socket. The live price, where Amazon publishes one, is on each buy button.

Feit Electric OM60DM/5CCTCA A19 - the pick. 800 lumens from 8.8 watts, CRI 90, dimmable, and listed by Feit for enclosed fixtures and damp locations, with 2700K, 3000K, 3500K, 4000K and 5000K on a switch in the base. It is the selectable bulb with the fewest places it cannot go: a lamp, a bathroom globe, a covered porch fixture or a flush mount. Feit publishes a 3-year warranty and a 15,000-hour rated life, and it is Title 20 compliant.
Cons: changing color means taking the bulb out; 800 lumens is a 60W-class output, too little to light a large room from one socket; lumens at each setting are not published; one comparison chart on the Amazon listing gives 25,000 hours where Feit and the rest of the listing say 15,000.

Philips 11A19/DipS/5CCT A19 - the brightest dimmable pick. 1,100 lumens from 11 watts with CRI 90 and dimming, and the same five settings from 2700K to 5000K on a switch on the bulb. That extra 300 lumens over a 60W-class bulb is the difference between a floor lamp that lights a reading chair and one that lights the room. Philips rates it for 15,000 hours and 50,000 switching cycles.
Cons: Philips states it is not for closed fixtures, so it belongs in open lamps and shades only; the switch is on the bulb; Philips lists a 2-pack while the Amazon listing says 4, so check the pack count before you buy.

Feit Electric OM100/5CCT A19 - the most light from one socket. 1,500 lumens from 16 watts, a 100W-class output, in a standard A19 shape that is listed for enclosed fixtures and damp locations. For a single-bulb ceiling fixture in a bedroom or a torchiere lighting a whole room, that output matters more than anything else on this list. Feit rates it for 17,000 hours.
Cons: not dimmable, so it must go on an ordinary switch; CRI 80, the lowest here, so colors look flatter than under the CRI 90 picks; Feit lists it as not CEC (Title 20) compliant, which matters if you buy in California.

Feit Electric BR3065DM/6WYCA BR30 - for recessed cans. A 650-lumen, CRI 90 flood for recessed cans, dimmable from 10% to 100% per the listing, with the same five settings. What earns it a place is Switch Mode: set the switch on the bulb to that position before installing, and afterward each off-on at the wall steps the bulb to its next color. For a ceiling full of cans you cannot reach without a ladder, that is the only practical way to try every setting. Feit rates it for 25,000 hours.
Cons: you step through the colors in order to reach the one you want, and Feit says to cycle the switch seven times to bring a group of bulbs back into step; 650 lumens is right for a can but too little for a lamp; the warranty is 5 years on Feit's page and in the listing text, but 1 year in the Amazon spec table.

EcoSmart 14A19060W6CCT02 A19 - the widest range. Six settings rather than five, adding 6500K at the cool end, with 800 lumens, CRI 90, dimming and a listing for totally enclosed fixtures. If you want the option of a very cool light for a garage workbench or a craft table as well as warm white for the rest of the house, this is the only pick that covers both ends.
Cons: on Amazon it ships from a third-party seller, not from EcoSmart or Home Depot; Home Depot's own product page could not be checked, so the specs come from the Amazon listing and the manual; the damp-location rating is not published for this model; the Amazon listing states a 5-year warranty, while Home Depot's guide for a related EcoSmart model states ten years.

A table or floor lamp with an open shade. The Philips 75W-class for a lamp that lights a room, the Feit 60W-class for a bedside or accent lamp. The switch on the bulb is easy to reach under a shade, so you can try all five settings in an evening.

An enclosed ceiling fixture or bathroom globe. The Feit 60W-class if the fixture takes two or more bulbs, the Feit 100W-class if it takes one and the room is dark. Both are enclosed rated. Do not use the Philips here.

Recessed cans. The Feit BR30 with Switch Mode. Set every can to Switch Mode during installation and you can audition the colors from the wall, then leave them on the one that works.

A kitchen or bathroom you cannot decide on. This is where selectable bulbs earn their keep, because 3000K and 4000K both have a real case on a work surface - see 3000K vs 4000K. Start at 3000K, live with it for a few evenings, and move only if the counter still looks dull.

A garage, workbench or craft table. The EcoSmart, for the 6500K setting nothing else here offers.

A rental. Any of them. A bulb is the most reversible lighting change there is, and a selectable pack means the same bulbs can follow you from a warm bedroom in this apartment to a cooler home office in the next. More on what renters can change in can you change a light fixture in an apartment.

Choose the setting before you install. Feit and EcoSmart both describe selecting the color on the bulb and then screwing it in, and EcoSmart's use and care guide lists the steps in that order: select the color, turn off power to the fixture, install the bulb. To change a bulb that is already in, switch the light off, let the bulb cool, and take it out before moving the switch.

Decide in the evening, not at noon. Daylight through a window overwhelms any bulb during the day. The light that matters is the light you see after dark, so judge the settings then.

Set every bulb in a room to the same value. The eye judges a single white poorly and two adjacent whites extremely well. A 3000K bulb beside a 4000K bulb makes one look yellow and the other look cold. Five bulbs from one pack on one setting match; a mixed set does not.

Write the setting down. Once you have chosen, note it for each room. When a bulb fails in two years, the replacement goes to the same value on the first try instead of another evening of comparing.

Do not fix a dark room with a cooler setting. 5000K reads as crisper, not as more light. If a room is dim at 2700K, it needs more lumens - a brighter bulb or another lamp - not a colder one. See how to light a dark room.