The best light therapy lamps

Buy the Verilux HappyLight Lucent if you want the cheapest honest version of this product, and the HappyLight Lumi Plus if you want to start gently - it adds adjustable brightness and a countdown timer for a few dollars more, and those two things are what make a morning routine stick.

This is an unusually easy category to shop, because every lamp worth considering publishes the same pair of claims: 10,000 lux and UV-free. Once both are on the listing, the lamps are separated by handling rather than by output - can you dim it, does it time itself, and will it still be useful on the desk in April.

Everywhere else on this site, light is measured in lumens - the total output of a lamp. This is the one category that uses lux instead, and the two are not interchangeable.

Lumens leave the lamp. Lux arrives at your face. Because lux is measured at a surface, it depends entirely on how far away that surface is, and it falls off fast. A lamp rated 10,000 lux at 7 inches delivers far less at 18 inches, and the listing rarely makes that prominent.

The practical consequence is simple and widely ignored: the distance in the instructions is part of the specification, not a suggestion. Sitting at a comfortable arm's length from a lamp specified at close range is how people conclude the lamp did nothing.

Four criteria, in the order they actually change the buying decision.

1. 10,000 lux and UV-free, stated on the listing. Both claims, in writing. Every lamp here clears this; a great many lamps sold as bright white desk lamps do not, and are not substitutes.
2. Adjustable brightness. The feature most likely to decide whether a lamp is still in use in week three.
3. A timer. A 20 to 30 minute session you are timing yourself turns into a session you keep checking the clock through.
4. Whether it is useful the rest of the year. A lamp with color adjustment goes on being a desk lamp in May. A single-mode panel goes in a drawer.

We did not test these and we make no clinical claims about them. Every figure here is the retailer listing's own, linked below, and where nothing is published we have written that rather than estimating it.

Verilux HappyLight Lucent - the pick. 10,000 lux, UV-free, one touch, detachable stand, forty dollars. It does the thing the category exists to do and nothing else.
Who it is for: anyone buying their first one, and anyone buying it as a gift where a complicated device would be a burden. Who should skip it: anyone who knows bright light gives them a headache - you want a brightness control, and this has none.
Cons: single brightness; no timer; small panel, so head position matters; no lumen, kelvin or CRI figure published.

Verilux HappyLight Lumi Plus - the one most people should actually buy. Same panel and same claims, plus adjustable brightness and a countdown timer, for roughly three dollars more at the prices we checked.
Who it is for: anyone building a morning routine, and anyone easing in over a first week. Who should skip it: nobody, really, unless the extra three dollars decides it - which is a strange way for a category to be priced and is the main reason the Lucent is not an obvious buy.
Cons: no color adjustment; still no lumen, kelvin or CRI figure; modest panel for the money.

Verilux HappyLight Luxe - the one that survives spring. Adjustable brightness and adjustable color on the largest panel of the three, so in April it becomes a warm desk lamp rather than clutter.
Who it is for: a permanent desk, especially a home office where it can do two jobs. Who should skip it: anyone with a small desk - it takes real space - and anyone who only wants the twenty minutes.
Cons: about the price of two Lucents; no kelvin values published for the color slider; largest footprint here; no CRI, so it is not a lamp to judge color by.

Circadian Optics Lumos - for a cramped desk. The panel pivots, which is the practical answer to a desk where you cannot move the chair to suit the lamp.
Who it is for: a tight corner desk or a shared table where the lamp has to be aimed rather than placed. Who should skip it: anyone who wanted dimming - it is Luxe money without the Luxe controls.
Cons: no brightness levels published; no timer; full-spectrum is marketing language, not a measured figure.

Put it where you already sit in the morning. The lamp that works is the one beside the breakfast table or the keyboard. A lamp that requires you to go and sit somewhere specific for twenty minutes is a lamp that gets used twice.

Off to one side, not straight ahead. The usual instruction is to have the lamp angled towards you rather than stared into, which is also why the pivot on the Lumos and the stands on the Verilux lamps matter more than they sound.

It is not a room light. None of these will fix a dark apartment in January - they are a twenty-minute appliance aimed at a face. The room is a separate problem, and it is the one lighting a home through winter and how many lumens a room needs are for.

The morning half has an evening half. If you are buying a lamp because dark mornings are hard, a sunrise alarm clock addresses the same complaint from the other end and costs less than the Luxe.