If you're looking to give your home a refresh, there's no faster way than to change the lighting. Decorative smart lights can act not only as wall art but as mood lighting as well.
And that's not even getting to the smart functionality. Smart lights can be operated remotely, by voice commands, or on a schedule. Many can also pulse in time to music, or add drama to your TV or gaming set up.
Scheduling your lighting to come on at dusk or home time means your house will always have a welcoming glow when you need it. And scheduling it for morning can help you to wake more gently than a blaring alarm.
Plus, there's the lazy pleasure of being able to dim the lights pre-movie, via your phone, tablet or even your smartwatch, without having to get up from the sofa.
We’ve reviewed and rated products from simple, white, dimmable lights to smart lamps with additional functionality, smart strips, lights for streamers and more. We've also got recommendations for the most fun, versatile and vibrant colour-changing panels.
And, if you read the smart buying guide after our round-up, we explain how ditching traditional incandescent bulbs for LEDs can be an advantage.
If you're interested in building up your smart home ecosphere, check out our smart plug round-up, to bring smart functionality to everything from hair straighteners to vintage lamps.
Logitech Litra Glow
- $59.99
The Logitech Litra Glow is a handy, soft light perfect for those using a webcam, be it for work or content creation. We all know just how bad webcams can look – especially with poor lighting – and that’s what the Litra Glow aims to fix.
The small, USB-powered light is attached to a three-way stand, allowing it to sit just about anywhere on your desk. Flip it over and there are easy-to-reach buttons on the back that control power, brightness and even the temperature of the light, ranging from cool daylight to a warm candlelight.
With no on-board AI or sensors to detect the environment, you’ll have to make the adjustments yourself, but that shouldn’t take longer than a minute, and the results are immediately noticeable.
The LED light is covered with a precision optic lens proprietary to Logitech that, when combined with a frameless diffuser, delivers a soft, wide light without shadows or harsh spotlights you get from cheaper ring lights.
It means your face will be much brighter and easier to see in dim environments, but crucially, it’s not bright or direct enough to hurt your eyes over long periods.
You’ve also got compatibility with Logitech G Hub for PC and Mac, allowing you to not only digitally tweak the light output but save preferences for easy access later on.
If you’re a streamer, or you just spend a lot of time on video calls, the Logitech Litra Glow is one of the most capable smart lights around.
Philips Hue Starter Kit
- $148.99
Philips Hue is one of the best-known smart lighting systems. The starter kit comes with three standard screw-fit lightbulbs that can be adjusted from a smartphone app, and a hub that connects to your router.
Control extends to brightness, colour and timing - you can set your lights to come on at preset times, or when you approach or leave the home, and even entirely remotely over the internet when you're miles away.
With the system set up, you can have the three bulbs in the same room or set in different rooms, although many of the preset lighting schemes use complementary colours so work best with the three bulbs in view together. You can control up to 50 bulbs, which should be plenty even for the biggest homes.
With a little exploration of its possibilities, and some of your own creativity to blend it with your home and lifestyle, it will literally light up your life. And like LIFX, you can control your Hue bulbs with Amazon's Echo.
The latest Hue bulbs now even work without the hub, catching up to smart lighting rivals, though you'll still want the Hub to link them all together and unlock the full functionality.
LIFX
- $59.99
LIFX makes a range of Wi-Fi LED bulbs which are controlled via the excellent smartphone app. There are colour (including white) and dedicated white bulbs available in both E27 and bayonet fittings.
The Generation 3 lamp outputs 1,100 lumens, and the LIFX + is the same but also incorporates infrared LEDs that shine at night to light up the room for your security cameras.
LIFX bulbs are expensive, which is their main drawback, but you can get small discounts if you buy in bulk. The fact no hub is needed means that you save money compared to other systems such as Hive and Philips Hue.
Many will find the bulbs worth the outlay, as they offer excellent light quality, whether colour or shades of white, and the colour bulbs also offer the full range of white shades.
We particularly like the fact that the app separates whites and colours and you can adjust the colour temperature to mimic natural light at different times of day. If you have more than one bulb, you can group them and either synchronise the colour and brightness, or use one of the 'themes' which sets their colours and brightness independently.
Grouping lights also makes it easier to control the bulbs from Alexa, the Google Assistant or (if you choose HomeKit enabled models) Siri.
LIFX also supports IFTTT, so you can get the lights to turn on automatically when you arrive home and turn off if you leave, as well as plenty of fun things such as making them flash blue when you are mentioned on Facebook, for example.
The range has expanded to include GU10 bulbs, and LIFX Mini, which should fit in smaller spaces where the large versions are too big.
Cololight Pro
- From £44.95
The Cololight Pro is a decorative smart light, with a compact design that's easily customisable. Comprising small hexagonal panels, the light can be formed into different shapes and programmed into a wide range of solid colours, dynamic effects and customisable patterns.
The design isn't extremely robust - one knock and the whole construction can go tumbling. However, once you've got it in the shape you want, it can be a striking addition to any desk, end table or gaming setup. The Cololight can also be mounted onto the wall with an additional kit.
At this price point (from £39.99 for three panels), the Cololight undercuts lots of other similar products by quite a bit, and is a great product to start to experiment with if you're interested in arty lighting.
Read our full Cololight Pro review
Nanoleaf Shapes
- $199.99
Nanoleaf Shapes are far from cheap but they’re a dynamic way to combine smart lighting with wall art. You can combine panels of different shapes (there are two sizes of triangles, plus the hexagonal panels we reviewed) to create your own interlocking designs.
They’re easy to set up and use, although the app is not very helpful at explaining all of the features.
Shapes can be set up to complement your TV or monitor and have touch sensors so that they can be used for games. You can adjust their brightness and they should last for 25,000 hours (34 years for two hours per day).
They can be controlled via their control panel or the app, although for some features, you’ll have to use the desktop app, rather than the mobile version. And they’re compatible with Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and more.
They come with a 2.5m power cable, which will give you a bit of leeway in positioning your design.
Read our full Nanoleaf Shapes Hexagons review
Nanoleaf Elements
- $299.99 (starter kit)
With the Elements set, Nanoleaf has created a set of lights that looks good both on and off - important really, in decorative lights. The panels have a textured, wood-effect finish that adds a touch of Scandi aesthetic to your wall. In our opinion, they're the best looking Nanoleaf set yet. The lighting also reaches to the edge of the panels, which is an improvement on earlier sets.
However, all this comes at a price. Not only are they expensive but their features are limited. Instead of supporting colours, they only display a range of white light. This means they won't support Screen Mirror or gaming gear integration. The music integration is also a bit patchy but there are other good features in the app, such as scheduling and gesture control.
Bear in mind that if you're not confident in setting up, the included manual isn't a huge help and you might have to watch a YouTube video or two.
Read our full Nanoleaf Elements review
Govee Glow Smart Table Light
- $69.99
The Govee Glow is an attractive table lamp that doesn't look a million miles away from the much more pricey Dyson Lightcycle Morph. If you're looking for an ambient light and you have limited space and budget, the Glow is a good option.
However, where the Morph will give you a number of different lighting options, from a bright working light to a soft relaxing glow, the Glow will only give you the latter. It's not really even bright enough to read by.
But as a mood light, it works brilliantly, diffusing light through the punched out holes in its column. You can change the colours and perform all the other controls via the Govee app on your phone or by using a voice assistant. There are also buttons on its base for switching it on and off the old fashioned way.
Read our full Govee Glow Smart Table Lamp review
LIFX Beam
- $199.99
Beam is 'feature lighting' rather than being designed to light up a whole room. It's a lot like LIFX's Z kit, but instead of flexible LED strips, you get six plastic 'beams' which stick to your wall and join together using magnets.
As well as whites and colours, you can choose themes or paint your own selection of colours along the length of the Beam kit, then you can animate those colours with various effects.
There's integration with Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri (plus HomeKit) as well as IFTTT. And like other LIFX lights, this one supports the Day & Dusk feature, which emulates natural light through the day.
Read our full LIFX Beam review
LIFX Z
- $79.99
LIFX's range includes an LED strip called LIFX Z. The starter kit includes the power supply and separate small controller box, to which the strips connect. You get two 1m strips in the box, and additional strips (you can have 10 in total) cost £29.99/$29.99 each. There's also an expansion kit which comes with four strips, but this a little harder to find in stock.
What's impressive is how bright these strips are - much brighter than Osram Lightify or Philips Hue, and with far better colour reproduction than the cheap strips you can buy. Plus, like other LIFX bulbs, they don't require a hub, so can work on their own as long as they're in Wi-Fi range. Plus, each strip supports eight colour zones and you can either choose a 'theme' or 'paint' your own colours using the app.
Thanks to separate white LEDs, the strip also creates fantastic white light. You can choose from 2500-9000K, which is a huge range covering very warm white to cold bluish light.
The strips will adhere to most flat surfaces, are water resistant and bend vertically. However, it's awkward to make them go round corners or install in a bay window as they're not flexible horizontally along their length.
Hey! Smart Strip
- $0.0
The 12W RGBW LED smart strip from Hey! is excellent value. If you’re looking for an inexpensive way to add colourful backlighting to a gaming or TV set-up, it’s a great option. In the box, you’ll get a 5 metre LED strip, which can be stuck to most surfaces, and a power supply.
It’s easy to set up (as long as you have a good wi-fi connection) and the straightforward app makes it simple to control your lights and change their appearance at a touch. There are two lighting options: white and colour. The colour option is controlled with a touch wheel that allows you to choose from an endlessly tweakable spectrum of colours. You can also adjust the brightness and saturation for more subtle effects – good news, because maxed out, the colours are pretty lurid.
The white lighting option has a dimmer but no way to change the warmth of the light, which is a relatively neutral white.
You can opt to adjust the lighting yourself or choose from one of the pre-set ‘scenes’ that either cycle through colours (‘soft’, ‘colourful’ or ‘dazzling’ are examples) or create moods like ‘night’ or ‘leisure’ (static white light, at various brightness levels). There’s even a reading scene, although I think you’d struggle to read a book by its rather dim setting. Still, it creates a nice atmosphere for reading on an electronic device. You can also create and save your own scenes.
Hey! also makes other smart lights, including bulbs and spotlights. The light strip, like most of the company’s products, is compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant for voice control. Hey! smart items are nicely boxed and come with an easy-to-follow start-up guide, making them good options for the less technically-minded.
Smart light buying guide
Smart bulbs can create different mood lighting for different rooms in your house, give you control from afar or allow you to schedule on and off times from your phone or tablet.
With growing support for smart speakers like the Amazon Echo or Google Home/Nest, you can use voice control to turn smart lights on or off, dim them, or change their colour - the sort of brilliant smart home feature that's entirely unnecessary but spectacular fun once you have it set up.
Smart lights come with different fittings, including the bayonet type as well as E27 screw (and some come with adapters to fit both), although it's harder to find smart bulbs that use the common GU10 spotlight fitting - and expensive to fit out a full range of spotlights.
All smart lights (certainly all those we've seen) use LEDs. Some key benefits to using LED rather than incandescent bulbs are that they use less energy, produce less heat, and last much longer.
But there are some downsides, too. A problem with LED lighting is that it's still much more expensive than the technology it replaces. Yes, you'll spend less on your energy bill and in buying fewer replacement bulbs, but how long will it take you to see a return on your investment and enjoy those savings?
Colour temperature and brightness are important for home use. The former is measured in Kelvin, where 2700-to 3000K is a warm white; higher values look cooler and lower values warmer. Brightness is measured in lumens - look to match or exceed that provided by your current bulb.
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