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I'm sure it would be possible to extend bulb life by ramping up the voltage slowly to reduce the thermal stress. not worth it in most environments, but in a bathroom, why not. I understand there are soft start mechanisms used in certain electric motors, i know of an anglegrinder that used one. maybe i could do a transplant some day.

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A few years ago, I retrofitted my entire house with Lutron Caseta switches, for home automation purposes.

The Casetas allow me to soft-start each bulb, and to run lights at less than full brightness most of the time.

It would have been interesting to see the effect on incandescent bulb life, but I also took the opportunity to replace all light bulbs with dimmable LCD, so the question is moot.

I recently retro-fitted my portable table-saw with a soft-start. The process is quite easy, though the soft-starter you use has to be picked for a certain power-draw. And they might be specific to the type of load (i.e. specific to a universal AC motor)

I got my soft-starter from amazon for €10.

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