Light-hole (lh) excitons (Xlhs) in quantum wells (QWs) are hardly studied compared with heavy-hole (hh) excitons (Xhhs), mainly due to the difficulties of their experimental observation. In this paper, a comprehensive study of both types of excitons in high-quality GaAs/AlGaAs QWs of different widths is performed. We focus on the energy positions of exciton resonances and the exciton-light interaction. The effect of mixing lhs and hhs in GaAs-based structures on these exciton characteristics is investigated. The corrections to the exciton energy due to mixing are only a fraction of millielectronvolts for wide QWs, in which the energy levels of Xhhs and Xlhs are close to each other. It is also experimentally found that the oscillator strength of Xlhs is ∼2.5 times less than that of Xhhs. This value noticeably deviates from the 3:1 oscillator strength ratio known for optical transitions between free electron and hole states. This deviation originates from the different squeezing of the Xlh and Xhh wave functions due to distinct values of the effective masses of the Xlh and Xhh in the heterostructure. Mixing of hh and lh valence bands is not so important.