FWIW, OP, we had a similar issue. Our house is fairly old, with a few small windows and not much light. Our living room, for example, is a knocked through double parlour (so quite large), yet has a single light fixture dangling from the middle of the ceiling. A regular low wattage light bulb barely let you see what you were doing at either end of the room. We're surrounded by trees and high fencing/walls (school next door), and have no street light nearby, so our house was always just dingy. We got used to it after moving in, but over the years noticed we'd become flat, went out less, got sick more and were generally a bit miserable.
Rather than fit new fixtures and buy light bars etc, I did some research and first tried removing all the light shades and swapping out every light bulb in the house with
THESE LED light bulbs. They are the brightest (by output) I could find for a regular light socket. It's a Chinese manufacturer and they come in a six pack (about £18), but they're a very crisp and bright 1,900 lumens each, at 6,500k (daylight), while only drawing 16W each. They output 120W equivalent, and they really are exceptionally bright in real life - even more than the specs might suggest. Our house at night went from a dull yellowish glow you could barely see from the garden gate, to looking like a dental surgery that stands out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the street.
It actually took a few days to adjust to the difference!
I made a point of telling the kids they could stop worrying about turning off lights when they left rooms etc, and we tend to have 4-5 lights on around the house continuously now. That's still not even 60 watts and costs a pittance overall, but the difference in person is astounding. Now it's just normal to us, and for the last year we've all been back to our usual selves. Anecdotal, certainly - but good lighting is a must imo.
