The best G25 globe bulbs for a vanity

A vanity bar hides nothing. The bulbs sit in the open at eye level, a foot or two from your face, usually with a mirror behind them doubling everything. That changes what a good bulb is: on a ceiling you buy lumens, and on a vanity you buy diffusion and color accuracy, then lumens.

G25 is the globe size these bars were designed around - 25 eighths of an inch, about 3.1 inches across. The round glass is doing a job. It spreads the light source over a wide surface so no single point is painfully bright, which is exactly the fix for a bar that makes you squint while you shave.

The two real decisions are glass and CRI. Frosted glass hides the filament or the LED board; clear glass shows it off and glares. CRI decides whether your skin looks like your skin - and the vanity is the one place in a house where that is the whole point.

1. Published CRI, with 90 as the target. Above a mirror this outranks brightness. Where a maker and a retailer disagree on CRI, we publish both figures.
2. Diffusion. Frosted or milky glass for a working mirror; clear only where the fixture is decorative. Where a maker publishes a beam angle, a wide one confirms the glass is doing its job.
3. Lumens per bulb, in context. These bars carry three to six bulbs, so 450 lumens each is not dim - it is 1,400 to 2,700 lumens of vanity light.
4. Damp rating. A bathroom is the definition of a damp location, and two of these publish the rating.
5. Dimming. A vanity that is right at 7am is often too much at bedtime. All four dim; the Sunco pair publish a 10 to 100 percent range.

Sunco G25 clear filament - the pick where the bulbs are meant to be seen. 500 lumens at 2700K with a published CRI of 90. If the fixture is a decorative bar and you want the filament look, this is the version that still renders skin tone honestly - which is the usual compromise clear bulbs force you to make.
Cons: clear glass glares at eye level, so it is the wrong choice directly above a working mirror.

TORCHSTAR G25 frosted - the best all-round vanity bulb here. 500 lumens from 4.5 watts, frosted, damp rated, with CRI 90+ published on TORCHSTAR's own product page. Frosted glass plus high CRI is exactly the combination a mirror wants.
Cons: the CRI figure conflicts by source - 90+ on TORCHSTAR's page, 80 on the Amazon listing; 15,000 hours is the shortest life here; and the model number on Amazon does not appear on TORCHSTAR's own site.

Sunco G25 frosted - the widest spread. 450 lumens over a published 230 degree beam, damp rated, 25,000 hours and a five-year warranty. That beam figure is the one number on this page that directly predicts comfort: light wrapping out of the globe rather than punching forward.
Cons: CRI is published only as a floor, 80+, which is a step down from the other two; 450 lumens each is the dimmest here; and it comes in twelve-packs.

KGC G25 milky glass - the softest look. Milky glass with a published CRI of 90+, for a bar where you want no visible source at all.
Cons: neither lumens nor wattage is published, so you are buying the look and the CRI claim rather than a measured output.

All the same bulb, always. A bar with two slightly different whites in it is the most visible mismatch in a house, because the bulbs are side by side in your eyeline. Buy one pack, fit them all at once.

Point the bar at the face, not the mirror. Bulbs above a mirror light the top of your head; light beside the mirror lights your face. If the fixture is fixed above, frosted glass and a dimmer do most of the repair work. The fixture options are in the best bathroom vanity lighting.

Renting? The bulbs are the only part you can change without touching the wiring, and a frosted high-CRI globe transforms a builder-grade bar. If the fixture itself is the problem, see plug-in vanity lighting.

Damp rating is worth the extra dollar. Steam is the working environment here. Both Sunco bulbs and the TORCHSTAR publish a damp rating; the KGC does not.