Did you know that setting your lights to turn off when you don’t need them can save significant cash on your monthly energy bills? And switching to LED lights, which use just a fraction of the watts of old incandescent lights, can also save up to $225 per year, according to the Department of Energy. Both benefits combine in smart lights, which give you detailed app control over new, long-lasting LED lights around your home.
Smart lights help home-havers dive into the smart home world with a cheap addition that’s easy to set up. But if it’s your first time, you may not be sure where to start with all the smart light and bulb options available. No worries — I have several choices that will narrow your plans down to exactly what smart light you need.
Set your budget
Smart bulbs are cheap, support multiple voice assistants and have lots of fun tricks.
First, the good news: Unlike pricier smart home devices, smart lights are very affordable, and you probably don’t need to spend more than $50 or less. You don’t need to replace every light in your home (unless you really want to), so you only need one to four smart lights to get started. And these products are more affordable than ever. The cheapest smart bulbs cost only $10, while even big floodlight bulbs are typically only $10 to $30. Even smart light switches tend to start around $30 to $40, depending on the type you want. Which brings me to the next important question.
Read more: Best Home Security Cameras with Floodlights
Decide if you need smart bulbs or a smart switch
Smart switches work better for lights you can easily change out.
A smart switch is very different from a bulb with smart technology. Smart switches replace your physical switch wired into the wall with a new version. That lets you keep your old lights, which is very useful if you have a chandelier or pendant lighting that’s not easily replaced by smart bulbs.
Switches can often connect to apps as well for remote control, but they include unique abilities, like presence sensing in a room so they can automatically turn on, or ambient light sensing so they can turn on when light is low. Most also have dimming capabilities, if your lights are compatible.
Smart switches are more expensive and take a lot more work to install than smart bulbs. The best fit depends on the lighting situation in your home, so take some time to think about what lights you have. That’s also the perfect opportunity for a closely related choice.
Pick specific light spots that will make the most difference
Smart lights make a big difference — especially in the right spots.
Like I said, not every light needs to be a smart light in your home. I have smart bulbs in a couple of my lamps and smart floodlights in my open floor plan room and am looking to install an outdoor version in my porch. That’s enough for me, and you may get results with just one or two.
Smart lights work best in convenient locations, as key accent lights or as the primary light in a room. Common favorite spots include entryways, bedroom lamps, lights above a living room, hallway lights, den lights, small nooks and basically anywhere in a dorm.
Check your socket sizes and space
The socket size and bulb shape need to match your current lighting situation.
With your smart light choices narrowed down to the right locations, it’s time to check your sockets and note what kind of bulb you need (unless you’ve settled on a smart switch). This is often easy: Most bulbs in a home use the E26 base, which is the standard screw-in socket. There are other bases like E12, but that’s usually too small for smart features, so the E26 base is usually necessary.
Then you must check how much space the bulb will have, especially if it’s a recessed light or in a small lamp. The classic American bulb shape is called A19, and it’s easy to find cheap smart bulbs in this size. The standard floodlight shape is called BR30, but some bulbs are a bit larger and may not fit in every floodlight space, so it pays to double-check.
Choose if you want color-changing lights
Colorful smart bulbs may be more useful than you think.
Many smart lights come in color, which means in addition to white and brightness levels, you can also switch the color to, well, any shade that you want, considering that apps offer millions of color options. I personally am a huge fan of the option to switch colors, from creating mood lighting on demand to prepping for a holiday or creating a light reaction, like turning lights red if a home security sensor goes off.
Color-changing abilities don’t usually cost much more than white lights (for my top smart bulb pick, the difference is only $2) but offer a lot of potential. Even if you decide you don’t need color options, think about getting a light with color temperature changes, which means a white light can become warmer or colder depending on the look you need.
Decide on extras like music syncing
Govee’s permanent lights could be the perfect holiday light solution for some homeowners.
Are you interested in playing with extra features that could be useful when entertaining or automating your lights? If you’re looking for the fastest, most streamlined experience, you don’t need to worry about these features.
However, if you like the idea of interesting modes, look for settings like sunrise/sunset, which mimics the rising and setting sun (offered by brands like Wyze) or music syncing, which links lights to music to play along with the beat (from Govee, Philips Hue, Cync and many other brands). There’s a lot to try out if you want to experiment.
Buy your lights and plan your lighting schedule
Think about the schedules you want to set for your smart lights.
It’s time to purchase your smart lights or switch, which you can easily find online or in many home improvement stores. As I mentioned, setup is really easy and involves screwing the bulb in, downloading the app and connecting the bulb to your Wi-Fi so you can control it. That part takes only a few minutes, but you’ll want to think about setting the right lighting schedule when you’re ready.
While bulbs have scenes and modes that shift color and brightness to a specific setting, you can also create automatic schedules that do it at specific times. That’s useful if, for example, you get up early for work or running while it’s still dark and you want a light like an entryway bulb to turn on a certain time for you without waking the whole house. Or maybe you want to save as much energy as possible by setting lights to always turn off at bedtime, or to turn off in the morning after everyone has left for work or school.
If you already have smart home devices like a smart speaker ($50 to $100), you can also plan on creating home routines so lights react to other situations, like an alarm going off, or you can simply control them with voice assistants.
Now that you’ve seen how easy it is to pick out your smart lights, check out my guide to the best smart plugs and the smart home devices I can’t stop using this year to learn about even more possibilities.
