Quick meta note: I’m writing my important blog posts on Substack. I’ll continue using my personal website for my product recommendations and other more minor things.

Quite a few years ago—in 2019—I wrote that someone should start a bright home lighting company.

Several people took up the, uh, torch. (I’m don’t claim they did it only because of me—several others were writing about the same topic around then too. See the above-linked post for some references and inspirations.)

Anyway, one of them, Simon Berens, started a company called Brighter. I backed it on Indiegogo and a few weeks ago I received my lamp. For under $900 including shipping (now closer to $1200), I received a very nice lamp, which I think is a great balance of brightness, practicality and warmth, and I can recommend it to readers who have the same problem I had. It sits in a room and really makes that room feel like a place I want to be in the winter. It brings a ton of warmth and coziness to the room, making it more practical and fun to work past sunset.

Some things I appreciate about it are that it has a diffuse light (reflected off the ceiling); adjustable color temperature; and no detectable flicker. I didn’t measure the CRI myself, but Brighter says it’s 95+ CRI and the light feels very comfortable.

I don’t have many complaints, but there were some manufacturing issues in my version that (according to Simon) are improved: some of the cables were sized a bit too short making the light hard to assemble, the control box wasn’t pairing properly, and the dimmer and temperature knobs are not very responsive. I still recommend the product even if these issues don’t get fixed, but I hope they do.

There’s not much point in sharing my own pictures or videos; the below image is from their website materials, but you can only really experience it in person. If you have a lighting problem, I think these lamps are quite reasonably priced given their practicality. The next batch ships in late January.