The Beginner’s Guide to Upgrading Your Home With Smart Lights

In the Lifehacker series, “a guide to automate your whole house”, we highlight all the ways to feed your home with autonomous technology, Room by Room. Whether you want to build an intelligent security system, turn an intelligent “stupid” device or simply control your lights from your phone, this guide will help you guide you.

We may not live in the future where your house can prepare your meals, make your dishes and walk your pets. But there is an area where the intelligent house of the future has become a normal reality while we were barely careful: your lights. I have been using smart lights for a better part of the decade and I cannot return to typical lights.

There are several brands of smart companies like Philips, GE, Wyze and Plus which can transform any lamp or Lighting in Intelligent Lighting Controlled at home. 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 make intelligent lights and, although it is technically possible to mix and match the bulbs of different companies, it is easier if you stick to an ecosystem. In this spirit, here are some of the most established companies and the advantages of each:

• The reigning champion: Hue Philips. These are the lights that I personally use. Philips Hue is the most established competitor, with a massive range of bulbs, light bands, lamps and other lighting equipment. Its software suite is also one of the most developed, with robust automation tools and colorful stage libraries. Historically, it is also the most expensive system, but the company recently announced A cheaper bulbs line.

• A cheap entry point: AS. If you don’t want to spend $ 50 per bulb in your home – and who can blame you? – Wiz is an affordable alternative to Hue. The company offers color bulbs that start as low as about $ 12 per bulb, in a variety of form factors.

• For the stylistic flair: Lifx. Similar to Philips Hue, LIFX is a little more expensive, but the company offers a wide variety of unique and elegant lights, as colorful tube bulbsOr Flexible LED bands.

• For customizable lighting tables: Nanole. While Nanoleaf technically makes its own series of smart bulbsThe company is best known for its modular lighting kits. These kits arise in forms like hexagons,, lines,, blocksand more. Each part can be controlled individually and you can combine them to make your own conceptions for wall lighting. They are not subtle, but they are fun as devil.

These are just some of the many companies that produce smart lights. While some like Philips Hue need dedicated hubs to operate their lights, most companies now focus on making autonomous bulbs that can connect directly to WiFi.

THE Growing standard is also (slowly), which facilitates the integration of the lights of several companies. Although you should always refer to the own application or hub of a company to make changes, intelligent compatible intelligent lamps can generally replace the need to search for “work with Google Home” or similar labels for your specific configuration.

What you need to configure smart lights

In most cases, the only thing you will technically need to configure smart lights is the lights themselves. Most intelligent light manufacturers make at least bulbs compatible with A19 sockets (the type of most of your lights and lamps), and ecosystems like Wiz, Lifx and Cync de GE do not require a dedicated center. Philips Hue, in particular, the fact. And if you enter Hue now, you are probably better Get the Hue Bridge Prowhich supports lighting lights with your media, using your bulbs as motion sensors and more new features.

Although that is technically everything you need To configure smart lights, there are a few things that you can get even better from your new system:

• An intelligent speaker. I cannot emphasize enough how great he feels to turn off the lights from your room while being tilted under the covers. The speakers controlled by voice like Google Nest and Amazon Echo devices are excellent for this.

• An intelligent screen. The only drawback of smart lights is that you can no longer use switches on the walls in the same way (more on this subject later). But an intelligent display can be a huge improvement. Google Nest Hubs or Amazon Echo Show devices can put a range of controls for your smart lights in a leading place so that anyone in your home can not only turn on and turn off the lights with a tap, but change the lighting levels or the colored scenes.

• Some smartphone widgets. Although everything above is practical, most often, you will probably have your phone on you. Some smart light manufacturers create robust widgets for iPhone and Android devices, so you can press a button on your home screen to turn on and turn off your lights. It is worth checking the features of a business in charge before engaging in an ecosystem.

The latest things you will need to configure your smart lights are time and patience. Although the process has become much simpler than it was a few years ago, you may have to spend a little time playing with room names, synchronization of services and testing a few orders. Fortunately, you usually only need to do it once. I even moved to a new house and kept my old configuration largely intact.

What you can do with smart lights

“Okay, of course, the smart lights become cheaper, but are they really worth additional money on simple bulbs and a wall switch that worked for decades?” I hear you cry. And I’m here to tell you, absolutely, yes. I have used a lot of new technologies over the years, it’s fun at first, but boring once the novelty has dissipated. But smart lights are one of the few areas where I never want to go back.

Here are some of the ways that I regularly use smart lights:

• Change the lights with the sun. During the day, the brilliant and fresh light from your windows has a different quality from that of the hot gradation lights to which you are used from the lamps. With smart lights, you can define your bulbs to adjust automatically according to a defined calendar (or your sunset / local sunset) to facilitate the lighting conditions of your home.

• Define the atmosphere for the appointment evening … Sometimes it is enough to transform a regular Tuesday evening into a romantic evening is a simple change of mood lighting. I have a few scenes in my recorded Philips Hue application when I want to create a beautiful atmosphere for my partner when we spend a fresh evening.

• … Or for personal care. Similar to the above, one of my favorite shade scenes is an animation that imitates the flicker of candles. Adjust the lights in your bathroom on this scene, draw a hot bath, set off a bath bomb and spend the most relaxing night.

• Simulate activity while you are absent. One of the best ways to think about a local burglar twice trying to enter your home is to convince them that someone is there. With lighting hours, you can put your home to turn on and turn off the lights even while you are absent.

• Automatically turn on the lights for you. Have you ever made a trip in things in the dark while you bring grocery products? No more. Most smart light ecosystems allow you to automatically turn certain lights when you enter a geofized area (like your home). Alternatively, certain suites like Philips Hue have motion detection features so that you can light lights when you enter a room, not to mention tools like GPS.

With Automation services like IFTTTYou can even configure more complex controls: the flashing lights of the EG when your doorbell rings or flashes a light in your desk when you receive an email from your boss.

Smart lighting switches make it easier

When I installed smart lights for the first time in my house, my relatives were mainly on board, but there was a discord: the lighting switch. People are always usually used to returning switches when they enter a room. With intelligent lights, they usually have to stay all the time, and you must even recycle your muscle memory a little so as not to forget and extinguish them accidentally manually.

There are two main ways to solve this problem in the world of intelligent house, and which you need can depend on the effort you want to make (and, frankly, whether you rent or be the owner of your home):

• Smart lighting switches in the wall. Some intelligent lighting switches, such as That of LIFX Can be installed directly instead of your existing lighting switches. This allows you to turn on or turn off a light on the wall switch, without cutting the possibility of turning it on from a voice command or a smartphone application. Since it also replaces the old switch, it is less necessary to adjust your muscle memory.

• Remote control switches. If you do not want (or cannot) replace your lighting switches in the wall, companies like Philips Hue offer a practical alternative in the form of Remote switches. These provide buttons that you can use to turn on the lights or turn off the lights from a battery-powered remote control. This particular model is delivered with a plate that you can stick on your wall next to your ordinary switch, while the remote control is removable so that you can take it with you in the room. He uses sticky pads and magnets for assembly, so you can put it safe in an apartment and take it with you when you move.

Strictly speaking, smart lighting switches are optional. This is part of the attraction of smart lights, after all. But if you live in a house with several people, and if you have guests on who may not have access to your lighting controls, a physical switch can be a practical addition.