KM It's possible to have even less flicker, just really difficult in the bulb form factor. A lot of it comes down to how much room you have to stuff electronics. Most companies are cheap and won't pay the extra money for better components.
I'm pretty surprised IKEA is using such a good driver (extremely low flicker) on that bulb. We were clocking almost identical values on our bulb. From everything I understand about flicker, <1% should not be a problem as this is even better than incandescent lighting (~6% flicker).
The filaments also look like some of the better ones—less uni-directional. Sometimes you'll see filament-style LED bulbs that create directional patterns in the light output, but these filaments look like they would push light out in most directions.
The healthy lighting areas we considered when designing Bedtime Bulb were:
- Blue light
- Flicker
- Color Quality
- Glare
Those IKEA bulbs should be pretty low-blue, and we already have tested the flicker to be very low. Color quality is probably at least 80 CRI—although not ideal, it shouldn't be a problem from a headache/eyestrain perspective.
Which leads me to the thought of glare:
Do you use any type of shade on your lighting? We don't like the clear filament bulbs without shading because LEDs are extremely bright at the center. Even though clear incandescents also are quite glare-y, they seem to be nothing compared to LED.
On Bedtime Bulb, the frosting makes it a bit less harsh to look at, although you should still use a shade.
Also, I assume you're not using a dimmer with these? Even very good dimmers, like those from Lutron in the U.S., can increase the flicker %.