Here are four different circuits. In each, I assume that the lamp is a 9V, 10W lamp, meaning that its resistance is E^2/P = 81/10 ≈ 8Ω.
The four different configurations I tried are Common Emitter, Common Collector, Darlington, and NFET. I nominally tried to create a delay of about 1/2 sec, which is not much delay. In all cases, I tried to get the final current through the lamp close to what it would be if it the transistor is fully on. Note the timing resistor/capacitor in each case. Note that I didn't account for "resetting" the timing network for a new cycle, but that the simulation assumes that the capacitor is initially totally discharged (STARTUP directive).
I vote for the NFET version, which has the smallest timing capacitor, the largest timing resistor, the highest final current, and the best delay curve (no current until the end of the delay, then the lamp turns on quickly). The Common Collector is the worst.
The plots show the current through the lamp in the four circuits.