How To Choose The Best Smart Home Lighting

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Gained early experience with automation technology in the private and industrial sector, can turn his living room into a movie theater with one voice command and is the owner of this website. He is happy to share his accumulated experience with every new article.

Why Do I Need Smart Lighting?

Smart lighting is one of the best things in a smart home.

You can set your lamps to turn off automatically when you leave the room, or simply use a voice assistant like Amazon Alexa to operate them.

Many systems also offer the geofencing feature, with which the lamps can be switched on and off automatically according to your current location. So they could go on automatically when you come home and go out when you leave.

With smart lighting, you can fake your presence even when you’re not at home. For people for whom the security of their home is important, this is a good argument for smart lighting.

In order to realistically simulate your presence, you should orient the set schedule as close as possible to your normal routines after the lamps are lit.

I experienced this working well for the first time when we went on a short holiday. We were gone for a long weekend and had told our neighbors about it. Nevertheless, I have adjusted my smart lighting to switch on in the evening. On our second day I got a message on my smartphone with the question: “You are still at home – has something happened?

Not only was it very amusing, it also showed me that smart lighting can actually make your home safer.

Do I Need a Smart Home Hub?

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Even if you don’t want to convert your entire home into a smart home, you can improve it with smart lighting and add comfort and security while saving money.

If this is the case, you don’t necessarily need a Smart Home Hub, because you could just control your smart lighting directly from your smartphone.

So if you just want to make your lighting smart or just want to try something out, take a look at the Philips Hue light bulbs.

You can control them with your smartphone and schedule them. If you’d like to get more involved with Smart Home later, you can still add a hub or the Philips Hue Hub*.

If you already know that you will be adding other things to your Smart Home, such as thermostats, security cameras, etc., you will need a Smart Home Hub.

Our favorite is the Samsung Smartthings Hub.

It’s virtually compatible with all Smart Home products, so you’ll always be well set no matter what you want to add to your Smart Home.

3 Ways to Make your Lighting Smart

There are basically 3 ways to make your lighting smart. There are smart light bulbs, light switches, and plugs.

With all three variants, you can control your lighting with your smartphone or with a voice assistant.

Which of the three ways you choose depends on your situation and your preferences. Do you only want to control the lighting in your house or also in your garden? Can you replace the bulb of each lamp with a smart one, or have you recently replaced it with an energy-saving LED and don’t want to reinvest?

Each of the three variants has its advantages and disadvantages. But now, let’s get straight into the subject!

Smart Light Bulbs

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Smart light bulbs replace the normal light bulbs in a lamp. They can then be connected directly to the Smart Home Hub and operated via smartphone and voice assistant.

You should start small and not directly replace all your light bulbs with smart light bulbs. Maybe it’s just your goal to replace some important light bulbs with smart light bulbs in order to schedule important places in your house or fake your presence.

If so, I would start with the Philips Hue smart bulb set* which includes a few smart bulbs at a very good price.

In this way you can try out whether you like the principle and equip your home with even more smart lighting.

For example, I started with the lamp on my front door. I wanted to have it on and off at certain times and later added geofencing so that it always lights up when I come home in the evening or leave in the morning.

When I became familiar with how smart light bulbs work, I applied the things I learned in my living room and equipped it with smart light bulbs. Now I have different commands with which Alexa can set different lighting modes.

Smart Light Switches

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Smart light switches are an ingenious solution for various situations. They transform all connected lamps into smart lamps.

For example, if you’ve just replaced your old light bulbs with new, energy-saving LEDs, you don’t want to invest directly into new light bulbs.

Or do you have quite special lamps for which there are no good smart light bulbs? Smart light switches are perfect for such situations!

So if you want to make your lighting smart quick and cheap, this is one of my favorite solutions. The only disadvantage is that you have to do a little more than just turn a light bulb in and out. You have to dismantle your old light switch and install the new one. But it’s very simple – you only need very few tools and the manuals explain everything very precisely.

So if you haven’t had much to do with electronics installation yet, don’t be deterred from installing a new light switch.

In my basement and garage, I had many lamps that cannot be replaced directly with a smart light bulb. A smart light switch was the perfect solution because I didn’t have to invest in new lamps and was still able to implement smart lighting.

There are also dimmable smart light switches, which can dim your lamps infinitely even if they don’t have the feature themselves.

Smart Plugs

With a smart plug, you can make individual lamps, that need to be powered with a plug, smart.

The smart plug acts as an adapter between the normal plug and the lamp.

Of course you can also control all other electrical devices with a smart plug. Just like the smart light switches, this variant is particularly worthwhile for lamps where you either cannot or do not want to replace the light bulb.

For example, I have a special reading lamp with a light bulb that emits daylight. I wanted to make it smart, but not replace her special light bulb with a new light bulb.

In the end, I even decided on a smart power strip that I can use to control all the other electrical devices connected to it with Alexa and my smartphone.

Besides the ingenious Philips Hue light bulbs, the smart plugs were my entry drug into the Smart Home topic. There are so many things what you can do with them!

They can also be used to save a lot of money and pay for themselves after just a few months (see my article on how much a Smart Home costs and can save).

You can control all smart plugs with your smartphone and many with a voice assistant like Amazon Alexa.

You can give each plug its own name and address it individually. For example, I can order Alexa to turn on my reading lamp in the living room.

The smart functions behind it have also made it possible for me to automatically turn it off again after a certain amount of time, in case I forget it.

Smart Lighting – Beginner Sets

If you’re just beginning to equip your Smart Home with smart lighting, starter kits are probably the best choice for you.

The starter sets presented offer all the features you would expect from smart lighting and are very compatible with the most common Smart Home systems and voice assistants.

Beginner sets of smart lighting are no longer as expensive as they used to be. This makes them pay for themselves much more quickly, which usually means that the price can be recouped after only about a year through lower electricity costs.

In the following I show you the best starter sets for smart lighting. I have tried them myself and can highly recommend each one of them.

Philips Hue Starter Sets – Light Bulbs and Light Switches

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It all started with Philips Hue. They were the first to make smart light bulbs and are still the best in my eyes.

You don’t necessarily need the base station, the Philips Hue Bridge, to get started. Then you won’t be able to use the full range of features, but still make your first experiences with this kind of lighting.

Here are the best starter sets from Philips Hue:

Philips Hue Starter Set incl. Hub*: With this set you can jump right in and use all the features of the Philips Hue light bulbs. In addition, with the included Philips Hue Bridge, it is possible to extend the system very easily. So if you are quite sure that you want to add more lighting to your Smart Home (e.g. light strips or outdoor lighting), this is the right set for you.
Philips Hue Light Bulb Starter Set*: If you only want to test the smart bulbs first, you can buy several bulbs with this set for a very good price. If you like the principle of these smart bulbs, you can still buy the Philips Hue Bridge separately and expand the system that way.
Philips Hue Dimming Kit*: This is probably the smallest and cheapest starter set with which you can experience smart lighting. It contains both a smart light switch with dimming function and a smart light bulb.

Smart Plugs

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If you want to get into the details of smart plugs, you should take a look at this article: 10 Best Smart Plugs For Google Home & Alexa [Buying Guide]

To shorten your search, I can already tell you directly that the best smart plug is the TP-Link Kasa Smart Plug*.

It has an enormous range of functions and the simple operation and integration into a Smart Home result in an ingenious overall package.

The most important features of this smart plug are listed here:

Create individual schedules: You can set this WiFi plug to turn on and off at adjustable times. You can not only minimize your electricity costs with this but also fake your presence when you are not at home.
Alexa and Google Assistant: The TP-Link smart plug can be connected to Amazon Alexa or Google Home and be controlled via voice commands.
Simple installation and operation: With the Kasa App and the simple integration into Alexa or Google Home, you can almost compare the installation of the TP-Link smart plug with plug-and-play. Once you’ve connected it to your voice assistant, you can control it with voice commands. The app is very intuitive to use and offers even more useful features.
High maximum load: With a maximum power of 16 A, you can also connect powerful devices to this plug without worrying that it will burn out.
Consumption display: Since the smart plug is located between the consumer and the power grid, you can use it to record the power consumption of your devices. This allows you to track the current power consumption in the Kasa app and identify the devices that consume the most power and optimize their usage. If this feature is not important to you, you can also get the plug without a consumption tracker for a little less money.

Bottom Line

There are many different products when it comes to smart lighting that you can easily lose track and be confused.

I hope that this article has given you an overview and that you now know exactly what to buy.

Attention: When installing electronic equipment, please be sure to observe the manufacturer’s safety instructions. You have to take care of your own safety. The information on this site only helps you to learn.
Disclosure: This website is the property of Martin Lütkemeyer and is operated by Martin Lütkemeyer. Martin Lütkemeyer is a member of the Amazon Services LLC Affiliate Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to enable Web sites to earn advertising revenue through advertising and linking to Amazon.com. Links marked with * are affiliate links.