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In Lifehacker’s series, “A Guide to Automating Your Entire Home,” we’re highlighting all the ways you can power your home with autonomous technology, room by room. Whether you want to build a smart security system, turn a “dumb” device smart, or simply control your lights from your phone, this guide will help walk you through it.
We might not live in a future where your home can cook your meals, do your dishes, and walk your pets—yet. But there’s one area where the smart home of the future became a normal reality while we were barely paying attention: your lights. I’ve been using smart lights for the better part of a decade and I can’t go back to typical lights.
There are several brands of smart lights from companies like Philips, GE, Wyze, and more that can turn any lamp or light fixture into smart home-controlled lighting. You can use your phone, smart speakers like Amazon’s Echo line, or Google’s Nest speakers.
The best smart light brands right now
Several major brands manufacture smart lights and, while it is technically possible to mix and match bulbs from different companies, it’s easier if you stick to one ecosystem. With that in mind, here are a few of the most established companies and the benefits of each:
The reigning champion: Philips Hue. These are the lights I personally use. Philips Hue is the most established competitor, with a massive array of bulbs, light strips, lamps and other lighting gear. Its software suite is also one of the most developed, with robust automation tools and colorful scene libraries. Historically, it’s also been the most expensive system, but the company recently announced a line of cheaper bulbs.
An inexpensive entry point: Wiz. If you don’t want to spend $50 per light bulb in your home—and who can blame you?—Wiz is an affordable alternative to Hue. The company offers full-color bulbs that start as low as around $12 per bulb, in a variety of form factors.
For stylistic flair: LIFX. Similar to Philips Hue, LIFX is a bit more expensive, but the company offers a wide variety of unique, stylish lights, like colorful tube bulbs, or flexible LED strips.
For customizable lighting arrays: Nanoleaf. While Nanoleaf technically makes its own series of typical smart light bulbs, the company is best known for its modular lighting kits. These kits come in shapes like hexagons, lines, blocks, and more. Each piece can be individually controlled, and you can combine them to make your own designs for wall lighting. They’re not subtle, but they’re fun as heck.
These are just a few of the many companies out there producing smart lights. While a few like Philips Hue require dedicated hubs to make their lights work, most companies are now focused on making standalone bulbs that can connect directly to wifi.
The growing Matter standard is also (slowly) making it easier to integrate lights from multiple companies. While you’ll still likely need to refer to a company’s own app or hub to make some changes, Matter-compatible smart lights can usually replace the need to look for “Works With Google Home” or similar labels for your specific setup.
What you need to set up smart lights
In most cases, the only thing you’ll technically need to set up smart lights is the lights themselves. Most smart light manufacturers at least make bulbs compatible with A19 sockets (the kind in most of your lighting fixtures and lamps), and ecosystems like Wiz, LIFX, and GE’s Cync don’t require a dedicated hub. Philips Hue, notably, does. And if you’re getting into Hue now, you’re probably best off getting the Hue Bridge Pro, which supports syncing lights to your media, using your bulbs as motion sensors, and more new features.
While that’s technically all you need to set up smart lights, there are a few things you can get to make even better use of your new system:
A smart speaker. I cannot emphasize enough how great it feels to turn your bedroom lights off while tucked snugly under the covers. Voice-controlled speakers like Google Nest and Amazon Echo devices are excellent for this.
A smart display. The one downside to smart lights is that you can’t use switches on the walls the same way anymore (more on that later). But a smart display can be a huge improvement. Google Nest Hubs or Amazon Echo Show devices can put an array of controls for your smart lights in a prominent place so anyone in your home can not only turn lights on and off with a tap, but change lighting levels or color scenes.
Some smartphone widgets. While all of the above are convenient, more often than not, you’ll probably have your phone on you. Some smart light manufacturers build robust widgets for iPhone and Android devices, so you can tap a button on your home screen to turn your lights on and off. It’s worth checking to see which features a company supports before committing to an ecosystem.
The last things you’ll need to set up your smart lights are time and patience. While the process has gotten a lot simpler than it was even a few years ago, you might need to spend a bit of time fiddling with room names, syncing services, and testing out a few commands. Fortunately, you usually only need to do this once. I’ve even moved to a new home and kept my old setup largely intact.
What you can do with smart lights
“Okay, sure, smart lights are getting cheaper, but are they really worth the extra money over simple bulbs and a wall switch that’s worked for decades?” I hear you cry. And I’m here to tell you, absolutely, yes. I’ve used a lot of new tech over the years that’s fun at first, but annoying once the novelty wears off. But smart lights are one of the few areas where I never want to go back.
Here are a few of the ways I make use of smart lights on a regular basis:
Change lights with the sun. During the day, the bright, cool light coming in from your windows has a different quality than the warm, dimmer lights you’re used to from lamps. With smart lights, you can set your bulbs to automatically adjust based on a set schedule (or your local sunrise/sunset) to ease the lighting conditions in your home.
Set the mood for date night… Sometimes, all it takes to turn a regular Tuesday night into a romantic evening is a simple shift in mood lighting. I have a few scenes in my Philips Hue app saved for when I want to create some nice ambiance for my partner when we’re having a chill evening in.
…or for self-care. Similar to the above, one of my favorite Hue scenes is an animation that mimics the flickering of candlelight. Set the lights in your bathroom to this scene, draw a warm bath, toss in a bath bomb, and have the most relaxing night in.
Simulate activity while you’re away. One of the best ways to make a local burglar think twice about trying to enter your home is to convince them someone is there. With lighting schedules, you can set your home to turn lights on and off even while you’re away.
Turn lights on automatically for you. Ever trip over things in the dark while you’re bringing in groceries? No more. Most smart light ecosystems allow you to automatically turn on certain lights when you enter a geofenced area (like your home). Alternatively, some suites like Philips Hue have motion-sensing features so you can turn lights on when you enter a room, without relying on tools like GPS.
With automation services like IFTTT, you can even set up more complex controls—e.g., flashing lights when your doorbell rings, or blinking a light in your office when you get an email from your boss.
Smart light switches make it all even easier
When I first set up smart lights in my home, my loved ones were mostly on board, but there was one point of contention: the light switch. People are still generally used to flipping switches when they enter a room. With smart lights, they generally need to stay on all the time, and you even need to retrain your muscle memory a bit to not forget and accidentally turn them off manually.
There are two main ways to fix this in the smart home world, and which one you need can depend on how much effort you want to put in (and, frankly, whether you rent or own your home):
In-wall smart light switches. Some smart light switches, like this one from LIFX can be installed directly in place of your existing light switches. This one lets you turn a light on or off from the wall switch, without cutting off the ability to turn it back on from a voice command or smart phone app. Since it also replaces the old switch, there’s less need to adjust your muscle memory.
Remote control switches. If you don’t want to (or can’t) replace your in-wall light switches, companies like Philips Hue offer a handy alternative in the form of remote switches. These provide buttons you can use to turn on/off or dim lights from a battery-powered remote. This model in particular comes with a plate you can stick on your wall next to your regular switch, while the remote is removable so you can take it with you around the room. It uses sticky pads and magnets for mounting, so you can safely put it up in an apartment and take it with you when you move.
Strictly speaking, smart light switches are optional. That’s part of the appeal of smart lights, after all. But if you live in a home with multiple people, and if you have guests over who might not have access to your lighting controls, a physical switch can be a handy addition.
