The Best Light Therapy Lamp

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We’ve tested light-therapy lamps since 2017. As Wirecutter’s senior staff writer for health, since 2019 I’ve evaluated more than 100 lamps designed to help seasonal affective disorder (SAD), and I’ve personally tested over 30 light therapy lamps. I also review other household health devices, like blood pressure monitors and heating pads. For this guide:

• I read peer-reviewed studies, and I pored over message boards related to seasonal affective disorder and light therapy.
• Along with previous authors of this guide, I have spoken with various experts on the topic, including Alfred Lewy, MD, PhD, one of the first doctors to report on SAD, in 1980.
• To gauge the ease of use and efficacy of light therapy lamps, I’ve solicited a diverse group of people to give feedback on the aesthetic of various light therapy lamps as well as long-term test our picks.
• Like all Wirecutter journalists, I review and test products with complete editorial independence. I’m never made aware of any business implications of my editorial recommendations. Read more about our editorial standards.

When the days get shorter, many people can develop a case of the blahs. Yet that experience is far different from having a clinical case of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which should be diagnosed and treated only by a medical professional. Experts recommend using a SAD lamp or light box only under medical supervision, since it is, in fact, a medical device.

“A medical professional or therapist with experience treating seasonal affective disorder can help you find an effective device for your specific needs,” said Kelly Rohan, a professor of psychology at the University of Vermont who has studied light therapy since the 1980s. “They can also help guide you as to how often and for how long you should use the device.”

Therapeutic light boxes are not the only available treatment for SAD. If you think you’re among the roughly 5% of people in the United States with SAD, talk to a doctor to figure out your best course of treatment.

For most people with only mild seasonal mood disorders, eyestrain and headaches are the most commonly reported side effects from using a therapy light.

There are a few contraindications, however. “Because we don’t know the long-term effects of light therapy on the retinas, people with retinal diseases, such as macular degeneration or diabetic retinopathy, should speak with an ophthalmologist before starting light therapy,” said Raymond Lam, MD, a professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia who has been studying the effects of light therapy since the 1980s. Experts also recommend that people who take photosensitizing medicines (such as the antipsychotic thioridazine and some chemotherapy drugs) consult a medical professional before starting light therapy. And anyone with a history of bipolar disorder should know that “light therapy has the potential to cause a manic episode in susceptible individuals,” Lam said.

The manuals that accompany each of our picks contain a variety of warnings related to these and other medical considerations.

To ensure that you receive a SAD lamp’s full therapeutic benefits, there are a few important factors to consider, namely how much light a lamp delivers and how close you need to sit for the treatment to be effective.

The FDA does not regulate SAD lamps and other light-box devices. Experts advise using a therapeutic lamp only with a physician’s guidance, since certain medications and health conditions can be incompatible with light therapy.

Because we are not qualified or equipped to evaluate SAD lamps for efficacy, we focused instead on the following criteria:

• 10,000 lux: Most therapeutic lamps deliver between 2,500 and 10,000 lux (lumen per square meter). Experts say that in order to be therapeutically effective, a SAD lamp needs to project at least 10,000 lux. The more lux a light delivers, the less time you need to spend positioned in front of it. For most 10,000-lux lights, 30 uninterrupted minutes per day — preferably in the morning — should suffice. In nonscientific tests, we compared lux readings obtained with a commercial lux meter to check for any significant inconsistencies between stated light intensities and real-world readings.
• Positioning and distance: We also considered how close to each box you need to sit to get the maximum possible benefits. Light intensity is subject to the inverse square law, which says that the intensity of light falls off by the square of the distance that you move away from it. For instance, if you are 2 feet away from a light source, you see a fourfold decrease in intensity. The farther away a person is able to sit from a lamp and still receive 10,000 lux for maximum efficacy, the more flexibility they have in terms of what they can be doing and how they can be sitting during treatment. “I insist, absolutely, that any reputable, reliable manufacturer has to tell the consumer what the distance it should be from the eyes to achieve 10,000 lux,” light therapy pioneer Alfred Lewy told us. “If a light box doesn’t have that information, I wouldn’t use it.”
• Light face size: The larger the surface of the light box, the better. In his seminal book Winter Blues, Norman Rosenthal, the psychiatrist who coined the term “seasonal affective disorder,” notes that the lights “used in almost all research studies … have an illuminated surface that is at least about one foot square.” For that reason, and because many smaller therapeutic lamps have not undergone the same kind of rigorous study that their bigger cousins have received, experts recommend light boxes with the largest surfaces.
• UV-free light: We avoided any lamps that do not have a plastic filter to remove most, if not all, ultraviolet light (which are potentially harmful to the eye). And we avoided models that use blue LEDs, since there’s still some controversy over whether blue light, which is different from blue-enriched white light, can be harmful to the eyes.
• Additional specs: We also considered heat output, cord length, positionability, how much space each lamp requires, color temperature (kelvin), and nice-to-have options like timers and brightness levels.

Like any heat-producing device, a light-therapy lamp should be used in an open, ventilated space (avoid putting it on a desk with a hutch, for example).

The Carex Day-Light Elite has the largest light face of all our picks and the most adjustability. On its highest setting and at a distance of 12 to 14 inches, this lamp projects 10,000 lux of UV-free LED light from its 15.5-by-13-inch lamp face. That’s the same amount of lux that our other picks provide, and it’s the minimum that a SAD lamp needs to project to be therapeutically effective, according to the experts we interviewed.

The large light face can be positioned in several ways. You can use the kickstand for tabletop positioning, or you can mount the lamp to either a wall or a weighted base that has an adjustable arm (the arm allows you to adjust the lamp’s angle and vertical position, reducing overall glare and increasing the flexibility of where and how you can use the lamp). For instance, the Day-Light Elite can be set up so you can read a book beneath it while keeping most of your face positioned well within the therapeutic 12-to-14-inch range of the lamp face.

It’s easy to operate, and it can be set to shut off automatically. An on/off switch on the side powers the lamp; when it’s switched on, the lamp instantly begins to illuminate in one of four brightness intensities (1,000, 2,500, 5,000, or 10,000 lux). It has a built-in timer, which can be set to automatically turn the light off after 15, 30, 45, or 60 minutes. Plus, this model’s airtight cover helps keep the light face clean.

It emits a pleasantly warm light. Compared with the cooler tones of many other lamps, the Day-Light Elite emits a pleasant, warm glow with a color temperature of 4,000 K. (The Northern Light Technologies Boxelite we recommend has a warmer-still color temperature of 3,500 K.)

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It has a relatively short cord. The Day-Light Elite’s cord is only 5.25 feet, which is shorter than any of our other picks, and the manual says the lamp is not intended to be used with an extension cord. (None of our other picks have this warning.)

There are limits on the warranty coverage. The Day-Light Elite has a five-year warranty, which includes a few stipulations. Per Carex, warranty coverage may not include “labor charges incurred in replacement part(s) installation, repair of any such product, [and/or] shipping expenses.”

In side-by-side comparisons, the light output of the Verilux HappyLight Luxe was lower than that of our other picks. However, this small lamp is a solid option for light-therapy newcomers who don’t have the space or the budget for the other lamps we recommend.

It’s little but mighty for its size. The HappyLight Luxe’s 9-by-6-inch light surface still shines brightly, though not as brightly as those on our other, larger picks. The lamp’s claimed 10,000-lux, UV-free light projection is adjustable from 3,500 K to 5,000 K, and there are four intensity settings, so you can pick the light warmth and brightness that feels best to you.

It has a timer, and it automatically shuts off. This model also features a countdown timer that lets you set the lamp to stay on for five-minute increments up to an hour; when the timer is done, the lamp shuts off automatically.

It’s exceptionally portable. The HappyLight Luxe has the appearance and approximate size of a Kindle or a tablet, and it comes with a detachable stand that can also serve as a wall mount. At less than a foot tall and 7.5 inches wide, it also packs easily for travel. Its small footprint makes it simple to adjust and to move around for proper, effective placement; this is helpful considering that you have to place this lamp about 6 inches from your face to receive the therapeutic 10,000 lux.

It’s easy to clean. Like the cover on the Day-Light Elite, the HappyLight Luxe’s cover (which protects the LED bulbs) has an airtight seal, so the lamp is easy to keep (mostly) dust-free.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

You have to stay close for it to work. This lamp can emit 10,000 lux but only at a distance of 6 inches, which is half the distance of our top pick.

The cord is just long enough. At 67 inches, the cord on this model is shorter than the cord on the Northern Light Technologies Boxelite and the Beurer TL95, but it’s slightly longer than the cord for the Day-Light Elite.

The warranty isn’t the best. The HappyLight Luxe comes with a three-year warranty (two years shorter than our top pick’s). And note that you need to ship a faulty lamp back to the manufacturer. Registering a lamp gets you an additional year of warranty coverage.

If a warm color temperature is your top priority, you will likely prefer the Northern Light Technologies Boxelite. This lamp is more expensive than our top pick, and it’s not adjustable, nor does it have a built-in timer, but it looks sharp on a desk or table.

This lamp’s minimalist look sets it apart from most of our other picks. Our favorite aspect of the Boxelite is its sleek design. It has a picture-frame setup, minimal design with few accents, and clean edges. The back of the Boxelite is contained in a single smooth, black panel.

It’s bright, and its light is extremely warm. The Boxelite offers an even warmer light than the Day-Light Elite, with a color temperature of 3,500 K. Similar to the Day-Light Elite, the Boxelite provides 10,000 lux at a distance of 14 inches, and it emits UV-free light from a similarly large (15.5-by-12.5-inch) face.

It’s incredibly simple to operate, and it has a long cord. An on/off switch at the base powers the lamp. The bulbs take a few seconds to illuminate, but that’s normal for fluorescent bulbs. It has a 6.5-foot-long cord, which is plenty long for most users.

It’s warrantied for a long time (with some catches). This lamp comes with a seven-year warranty, so it offers two more years of coverage than the warranty of our top pick. We should note, though, that this warranty covers everything but the bulbs, and the customer is responsible for the shipping costs related to sending back faulty units to Northern Light Technologies.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

What you see is what you get. The Boxelite is not adjustable, but its slim, basic design helps it look less obtrusive than other lamps we’ve considered.

It can accumulate dust. Since the Boxelite’s plastic cover does not have an airtight seal (unlike the covers on our other picks), dust and grime can easily slip into the hard-to-clean space between the cover and the lights.

It gets hot. After being on for 30 minutes, this lamp radiated more heat than any of our other picks and felt extremely warm to the touch.

If you’re looking for a lamp that best simulates real sunlight, the Beurer TL95 is likely the best SAD lamp for you.

It is meant to mimic natural sunlight. This lamp is the only one of our picks to include “SunLike” LED technology, which is intended to more accurately depict natural light from the sun. However, “there is no indication that light sources mimicking the sun’s wavelengths are better for treating depression,” explained Raymond Lam of the University of British Columbia, adding that studies exploring this have shown “mixed results.” For most people, it’s more likely a matter of personal preference with respect to lamp brightness and color temperature. The TL95 has six brightness intensities of UV-free light with a color temperature of around 6,500 K. Its 10,000 lux are said to reach a distance of 10 inches.

It has a modern design. Testers marveled at the futuristic look of this lamp. Even though its face is about the same size as our top pick (12 inches by 18 inches), it seems much smaller due to the streamlined design.

It has a timer, a longer cord, and an easy to operate touchscreen. The TL95 has a built-in timer with four settings between 30 and 120 minutes. It also has a 9.5-foot-long cord, the longest cord among our picks. The touch controls are simple to navigate.

There’s a lifetime warranty (for one owner). If this lamp conks out, the original purchaser can send it back to Beurer for repair or replacement at any time. However, the customer is responsible for paying to ship the faulty lamp back (in its original packaging).

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The cool blue-white light is a bit stark. Next to other lamps we tested, the daylight-mimicking light is especially harsh. If you prefer warmer, more soothing lights, consider one of our other picks.

You have to sit closer to it for peak efficacy. While you can sit up to 14 inches away from our top pick and still get 10,000 lux, this lamp only affords that lux at a distance of 10 inches.

With the arrival of new seasons, especially winter, many people experience some emotional or physical changes: Your mood may swing, your eating habits may shift, and your energy levels may rise or fall. Some people are less able to cope with these changes. SAD is a seasonal pattern of major depressive episodes, as diagnosed by a physician according to criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. (Per DSM-5, SAD is a form of depression called “Major Depressive Disorder with Seasonal Pattern.”) This diagnosis can be made only by a medical professional.

For many people, although seasonal shifts in mood and energy can be unpleasant or annoying, those shifts are fairly simple to manage.

Other people feel the weight of these changes in a more serious manner. Maybe the symptoms aren’t quite severe enough for them to seek a doctor’s opinion, but the effects certainly make it hard for them to get out of the house in winter. It’s what folks sometimes informally call “the winter blues.”

And still other people experience these changes so severely that their lives are seriously disrupted. If you have true SAD, in the darker months you may feel like you’re experiencing a physical exhaustion that will never end.

It’s important to note that not everyone experiences SAD symptoms at the same time or in the same way. In Winter Blues, Rosenthal writes, “Just as the degree of seasonal difficulties may vary from one person to the next, so may the timing of the problem. For example, one person may begin to feel SAD symptoms in September, whereas another will feel well until after Christmas.”

In 1980, Alfred Lewy published the finding that sufficiently intense artificial light suppressed humans’ nighttime production of melatonin — a hormone linked to the regulation of the sleep cycle. According to interviews with Lewy, prior to that moment there was more or less uniform agreement among medical professionals that artificial light had little to no effect on people’s circadian rhythms. As it turned out, most experiments up to that moment had not used lights that were bright enough to induce a measurable change in human melatonin or circadian physiology.

“[Dr. Robert] Sack and I realized that humans really don’t have seasonal rhythms like animals do, like breeding and hibernation and reproduction,” Lewy explained. “We proposed a ‘phase shift hypothesis’ that is still the leading hypothesis for how bright lights treat SAD, which is that in the winter, with the shorter days, most people’s circadian rhythms drift late with the later dawn, out of phase with their natural sleep-wake cycle. It’s like having jet lag for five months. With morning bright-light exposure, those rhythms are pushed back earlier, back into phase with their sleep.”

Today, bright light therapy is considered an effective option not only for the treatment of SAD but also for other types of depression.

If you dislike the flat, rectangular light surfaces of most SAD lamps: Consider the cylindrical Bright Health 360 24-Inch Light Therapy Lamp. Like the Carex Day-Light Elite, this lamp emits the same 10,000 lux of 4,000 K light at a distance of 12 inches, and it’s also covered by a five-year warranty. However, it has a smaller overall footprint and may feel less clunky in your living space. “While most devices have a broader surface to reduce glare and increase comfort, the main issue is whether people will use it routinely,” said Jamie M. Zeitzer, PhD, a co-director at Stanford University’s Center for Sleep and Circadian Sciences. (The Bright Health lamp also comes in a 14-inch-tall version, but we think most people will find the taller lamp easier to position for maximum efficacy.)

If you’d prefer a cordless model that looks more like a spotlight than a therapeutic device: You may want the Verilux HappyLight Halo. Know, though, that as with our budget pick, you’ll need to position yourself very close to this lamp — within 6 inches of the light face — for maximum potential benefit. And if you plan to use it daily, you’ll need to charge it as often. Like the HappyLight Luxe we recommend, the HappyLight Halo has three color temperatures (3,500 K, 4,150 K, and 5,000 K), four intensity settings, and an onboard timer (10 to 60 minutes). This model is warrantied for three years.

Although the Alaska Northern Lights NorthStar 10,000 meets the recommended criteria for a light-therapy lamp and has excellent customer reviews, it typically costs over two times as much as our top pick, the Carex Day-Light Elite.

The Carex Day-Light Classic Plus was our top pick from 2017 until 2025, before we had thoroughly tested the newer Carex Day-Light Elite — which debuted in late 2024. The Classic Plus gives off as much light as our top pick, but it is clunkier, less adjustable, and not as aesthetically pleasing. Still, it’s a reliable light therapy lamp and the one to get if the Day-Light Elite is unavailable. (The Carex Day-Light Sky is a slightly smaller version; it has a long neck and a swivel head for custom positioning.)

For smaller spaces, Carex’s TheraLite Aura is a serviceable budget option with a reported 10,000-lux output at 12 inches. It is also a warmer light, at 3000 K. Its overall footprint is less than half the size of our top pick’s, and its light surface, in particular, is significantly smaller. This lamp is also less adjustable, allowing repositioning of the light surface’s upward/downward angle only (you can’t change the height). The smaller size and reduced adjustability limit your positioning options. With a recent price decrease, this lamp is less expensive than our budget pick, which is more portable and compact but reports only a 10,000-lux output at 6 inches.

The compact Carex TheraLite is less expensive than our budget pick, but its 3,000 K color temperature isn’t adjustable.

The one-year warranties on the following Carex TheraLite models aren’t competitive with our picks’ longer coverage periods. The Halo includes Qi wireless phone charging and four levels of brightness, while the Radiance includes a built-in alarm clock plus Qi wireless phone charging and five levels of brightness. The Aura Qi is an updated version of the Aura, and it includes a built-in alarm clock plus Qi wireless phone charging and four levels of brightness. In our tests, however, after 30 minutes of use, it became very hot to the touch, reaching 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Circadian Optics Lumine Light Therapy Lamp has a 6-by-6-inch light surface and is corded, so it’s difficult to achieve the optimal distance for therapeutic benefit.

We found the two-legged Northern Light Technologies’s Boxelite-OS unwieldy. We also discovered that the light surface quickly collected dust and put off a considerable amount of heat (including for quite a while after we had switched off the light).

We chose not to test the Solshine Photo Nutrition SOL PhotoVites 3M HealthSpan Therapy lamp, which the company claims beams 13,470 lux up to 24 inches. While 10 additional inches of space are appealing, at $450 at the time of publication, this model costs more than double the price of our most-expensive pick.

The SunRay II Light Therapy Box shines brightly and fiercely, achieving 10,000 lux at an impressive distance of 18.5 inches, but it is also heavy, cumbersome, and dated-looking. Additionally, its metal frame feels uncomfortably hot to the touch after 30 minutes of usage (hotter than any other lamp we’ve tested). At the time of publication, it cost $370.

We dismissed the Travelite and the Luxor lamps, both by Northern Light Technologies, due to their smaller light panels and lesser reviews, respectively. The company’s Flamingo lamp, affixed to a 4-foot-tall floor stand, regularly costs almost twice as much as our top pick.

The Verilux HappyLight Full-Size (VT20) is about the same price as our budget pick but lacks a countdown timer.

Kit Dillon and Anna Perling contributed reporting. This article was edited by Tracy Vence and Kalee Thompson.

1. Raymond Lam, MD, professor of psychiatry and BC Leadership Chair in depression research at the University of British Columbia, phone interview, August 6, 2025

2. Alfred Lewy, MD, PhD, former director, Sleep and Mood Disorders Laboratory at Oregon Health & Science University, phone interview

3. Elizabeth Saenger, PhD, director of education at the Center for Environmental Therapeutics, phone interview

4. Teodor Postolache, MD, professor of psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine, phone interview, November 5, 2020

5. Kelly Rohan, PhD, professor of psychology, University of Vermont, phone interview, August 5, 2025

6. Jamie M. Zeitzer, PhD, co-director, Center for Sleep and Circadian Sciences at Stanford University, email interview, November 1, 2022