Porch and entry lighting

A porch light is hardwired to the building, which puts replacing it firmly in the tier that needs a landlord's agreement and generally a qualified person - the framework is in the lease rules page.

That sounds limiting and mostly is not, because the bulb is where nearly all of the improvement lives. A sealed builder-grade lantern with a warm, high-CRI, enclosure-rated bulb in it is a genuinely pleasant entrance. The same lantern with a cheap cool-white bulb is the thing everybody complains about.

People assume outdoor bulbs fail because they are outdoors. Usually they fail because the fitting is sealed.

An LED bulb's electronics live in its base and are the part that dies, and what kills them is sustained heat. A porch lantern is typically a closed glass or plastic enclosure with no ventilation - the exact condition that traps heat. Rated life figures assume open fixtures at normal ambient temperature, which is why a bulb rated for 25,000 hours can fail on a porch in a year.

So use a bulb explicitly rated for enclosed fixtures. The Feit enclosed-rated A19 is the warm option at 2700K and CRI 90+; the Cree A19 publishes 815 lumens and a 25,000 hour rated life and is marked good for enclosed use, though at 5000K it is a utility choice rather than a welcoming one. For a small recessed soffit fitting, the Feit R20 is damp rated and physically fits where a BR30 will not. The full explanation is in best LED bulbs for enclosed fixtures.

Damp rated and enclosed rated are different things and a porch usually wants both - which is which is set out in wet rated vs damp rated.

2700K to 3000K. An entrance is the first thing a visitor sees and the last thing you see leaving, and warm light reads as welcoming where cool white reads as a service entrance. It also renders faces properly, which matters when the point is identifying who is at the door.

Modest output. A porch is circulation space and the published range for that is low. A very bright porch light does two unhelpful things at once: it dazzles anyone standing under it, and it destroys your night vision for everything beyond the pool of light, so the garden past it looks black.

High CRI is worth it here. Recognizing a face and judging what someone is holding both depend on color rendering, and a CRI 80 bulb makes both slightly harder. The reasoning is in high-CRI LED bulbs.

If the fitting is a decorative lantern with the bulb on show, a 2200K vintage-style bulb suits it - though at that warmth it is decoration first and illumination second, so pair it with something else if the step genuinely needs lighting.