The best bedside lamps

Almost every lamp on this site is judged on how much light it produces. A bedside lamp is the exception, because it usually has to satisfy two conflicting requirements in the same room at the same moment.

One person wants to read - light on a page, not much of it, but aimed. The other wants to sleep, which means light anywhere near their face is a problem. A lamp that is merely dim fails both: too dark to read comfortably, still bright enough to be annoying.

So the two specifications that matter here are unusual ones: how low the dimming goes, and how well the light can be aimed. Peak output barely features.

Glocusent clip-on reading light - the pick for a shared bed. CRI 90+ is unusual in a clip light, and ten brightness levels means the lowest is genuinely low rather than nominally low. It clips to a headboard edge up to about 1.6 inches and runs from USB, so it needs no table and no wall outlet if you have a power bank. Aimed at a page, it lights the page and almost nothing else.
Cons: no lumen figure published; a 1.6 inch clip will not grip a thick or upholstered headboard; and at 3.5W it is a reading light, not a room light.

A tunable smart bulb in the lamp you already own - the cheapest good answer. Bedside lamps are usually chosen for how they look, and swapping the bulb keeps that. A tunable bulb gives a warm bright reading setting and a very dim warm one for the middle of the night, both without getting out of bed - and the dim scene on a good smart bulb goes lower than most mechanical dimmers manage.
Cons: no published lumens or CRI; it needs the wall switch left on; and it puts an app between you and a light at 3am.

Philips Ultra Definition A19 - if you would rather not have an app by the bed. 800 lumens at 2700K with CRI 95, dimmable with any compatible dimmer. Put it on a plug-in dimmer and you have a physically-controlled bedside lamp with better color than any smart bulb here.
Cons: the dimmer is a second purchase, and mechanical dimmers rarely go as low as a smart bulb's dimmest scene.

A smart plug - for the schedule rather than the dimming. It cannot dim, but it can make the lamp come on at sunset and go off at a fixed time without anybody deciding to do it - see schedules and automations.
Cons: on and off only, and its physical button is at floor level behind furniture.

Shade bottom near seated eye level. Sitting up in bed, your eyes are roughly 24 to 30 inches above the mattress. A lamp whose shade bottom sits above that line puts the bulb in your eyeline every time you look up.

Reach matters more than footprint. A bedside table is small and already holds a phone, a glass and a book. A clip or a swing arm gets the light over the page without occupying the surface - the format is in swing-arm and clamp lamps.

Put the switch where a hand lands in the dark. A switch on the cord halfway to the floor is a design failure at 3am. An in-line cord switch, a touch base or a wireless remote on the headboard all solve it - see cord, foot and inline switches. This is the detail people notice every night and almost nobody checks before buying.

Warm, and lower than usual. 2700K is the site default and a bedside lamp is the one fitting where going warmer still is defensible. What is not defensible is anything above 3000K next to a pillow - see best bulbs for a bedroom.