The best smart lights can completely transform your home, whether you fancy a bit of digital redecorating, want to control your lights with your smart speaker, or just want to make your gaming rig look even more awesome, There are smart bulbs, smart lights and smart lighting systems of every shape and every size, with options ranging from traditional lighting to more decorative and futuristic designs.
All of the best smart lights use LEDs, which means they're low energy: they deliver lots of light but they don't need lots of energy to do it and they don't run particularly hot either. That means they last a lot longer than old-school lights. And because they're smart you can control them via the best smart speakers or best smart displays or, of course, with your phone.
The best known smart light brand is Philips Hue, and you'll find many of their products here: Hue is a good brand that makes good products. But it's not the only option, and in recent years we've seen brands such as Wiz, Govee, Eufy, TP-Link, LIFX and even IKEA bring out really clever smart lighting systems – often for less money than the market leaders.
No matter what kind of smart lighting you're looking for or how much you want to spend, these are the best smart lights you can buy right now.
The quick list
Best smart light system overall
Philips Hue is the biggest name in smart lighting, and for good reason. The quality of its hardware and software is unmatched, and you won't find a wider range of bulbs, lamps and light strips anywhere. If your budget can handle it, it's worth the price.
Best smart light for Alexa
Looking for an affordable smart light that'll work with your Alexa smart home system? Govee's Wi-Fi LED bulbs are responsive, and will work seamlessly with your Amazon-powered setup, though they're not quite as bright as Philips Hue.
Best smart light for Google Home
Nanoleaf has upgraded its excellent Essentials smart light bulbs with Matter compatibility, helping you build a future-proof smart home setup. Affordable and colorful, though again, not as bright as the equivalent from Philips Hue.
Best smart light for your TV
Set the mood with a smart lighting system that uses a camera to extend what's on your screen by projecting light onto the walls. We found it a great affordable alternative to a Philips Ambilight TV. Great for movies and gaming.
Best smart light for your bedroom
This portable smart lamp can be run from a rechargeable battery, and provides attractive lighting with a circadian option that adjusts its color and brightness to suit your selected sleep and wakeup times.
Best smart Christmas lights
Govee's dangling strings of smart lights are a fun addition to your Christmas decor, capable of displaying patterns, solid lights, or animated images. We had fun with them all year round too, using more subtle looks outside the festive season.
The best smart lights 2024
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The best smart light system overall
There's a very good reason why Philips Hue is the biggest name in the smart lighting scene: it's without a doubt one of the greatest offerings to the market, and has held the top spot in our guide for the best smart lights for several years. The lights produce the most natural tones of any smart lighting we've used, the app is easy to use, and installation is a piece of cake.
There's a wide range of different smart lighting too; from color (with 16 million shades) and white bulbs (both solid and ambient that offers a host of different hues) to side and ceiling lamps, outdoor lighting, and even Philips Hue lightstrips. We were also impressed the smart lights work with Alexa, Google Assistant, and HomeKit. With a Philips Hue Bridge, you can unlock Matter compatibility too.
That said, while the newer version of Hue Bulbs has Bluetooth built-in so you don't need a hub to set them up, the Hue Bridge ensures you can access all of the handy features such as geofences and the ability to customize when lights come on - for example at a set time, or when something happens (eg sunset or sunrise).
Read the full Philips Hue review
The best smart light for Alexa
These Wi-Fi connected LED bulbs from Govee might not be as smart as the Nanoleaf Essential bulbs above. However, they do excel in one area: Alexa Integration.
They're also slightly cheaper than Nanoleaf's offering, making them ideal for anyone that wants an Alexa-compatible bulb on a budget. On test, the bulb was responsive when being controlled from the app, which we found simple to use.
However, at this price there are some compromises. There's a limited selection of bulbs available and we found the bulb wasn’t as bright when displaying a color than when set to white or yellow. Despite its brightness rating of 800 lumens being on par with other, more expensive smart bulbs, the Govee seemed a little dim when displaying bold colors. The bulbs were also fiddly to set up compared to other designs on the market.
Read our full Govee Wi-Fi LED Bulb review
The best smart light for Google Home
Looking for future-proof smart lightbulbs that will play nicely with your mixed and matched smart home setup? Nanoleaf has you covered. It's one of the first companies to add Matter compatibility to its bulbs, meaning they work seamlessly with Matter-enabled devices from any other brand.
Despite the connectivity upgrade, the new version of the Essentials bulb costs the same as Nanoleaf's previous iteration, making it one of the most affordable smart lights around. It works equally well, too. During testing we found that voice control works almost instantly and colors are impressive (though it's not quite as bright as the equivalent Philips Hue bulb).
The only downside we found was that the bulb isn't Apple HomeKit certified, so some features (like Apple Adaptive Lighting) won't work unless you have a device to serve as an Apple Home hub.
Read our full Nanoleaf Matter Essentials review
The best smart light for your TV
The Nanoleaf 4D screen mirror and lightstrip kit surrounds your TV or gaming monitor with light, and uses a camera mounted either above or below the screen so it can extend the image onto your walls. It's a smart setup, and produces an effect very similar to a Philips Ambilight TV without the expense of upgrading your whole setup.
We found the Nanoleaf 4D system straightforward to set up, with adhesive light strips to stick around the back of your TV, and a mobile app that lets you map them, set palettes, create scenes using themes or keywords, and start screen mirroring.
The 4D lights can also sync with other Nanoleaf products, so if you have Nanoleaf Shapes lighting panels or Essentials bulbs in the room, you can create a great looking and immersive setup.
Read our full Nanoleaf 4D review
The best smart light for your bedroom
We really enjoyed testing the WiZ Luminaire Mobile Portable Light, which is particularly well suited to the bedroom thanks to its circadian rhythm feature, which adjusts the color and brightness of the lighting automatically based on your personal wake and sleep times.
The WiZ Luminaire can fill an area of a room with a spectrum of colors which can be controlled by the touch display, WiZ app, Alexa, Apple HomeKit and Google Assistant. You can either have it plugged in to an electrical outlet or use its rechargeable battery. Our reviewer took it with them between rooms, and it can even go outside providing you're within Wi-Fi range and there's no chance of rain.
The app could do with a little more refinement, but it works well enough. The feature our reviewer used most was the ability to set automations, which let you set static or dynamic lighting modes for certain times of day.
Read our full WiZ Luminaire Mobile Portable Light review
The best smart Christmas lights
The Govee Curtain Lights certainly make a splash, and although we particularly enjoyed using them during the festive season they're great fun all year round - whether you want to sync them with music for a party, or just add some cozy ambience while you settle down to read a book.
The curtain is made up of 20 fine strands, with 26 light beads embedded in each one. These are incredibly customizable, letting you not only set patterns and effects, but even use them as a screen to display images and animations (like a Christmas tree, a wreath, or a heart for Valentine's Day).
They were so easy to set up, we thought we must have missed a step (we hadn't) and Govee's app is straightforward to use. They're compatible with Alexa and Google Home too, so you can control them with voice commands.
If you want something smaller, our guide to smart Christmas lights is packed with more seasonal options.
Read our full Govee Curtain Lights review
How to choose a smart light
How to choose the best smart light bulb for you
When it comes to selecting the right smart lights for you, there are a number of things to think about before choosing a particular model.
Start by checking the type of fitting the smart light bulb has and whether it's compatible with your existing lighting or if you’ll need to buy adapters. Also decide whether you want lights that glow one static shade or offer different tones of white, or even a multitude of colors to ensure you create the lighting effects you want in your home.
Now consider how bright the smart light bulbs are. The brightness of LED bulbs is measured in lumens unlike incandescent bulbs, which are measured in watts. With incandescent bulbs, higher wattage means a brighter light but as LED bulbs are more power efficient that’s no longer the case. As a guide an 800 lumen LED bulb gives off the same amount of light as a 60w incandescent bulb, while to replace a 40w bulb with light of a similar brightness, look for an LED option that offers 450 lumens.
Some smart light bulbs connect to the internet via Wi-Fi and can be controlled when you’re at home, and when you’re not around. However, other models use Bluetooth and require extra kit if you want to switch them on and off remotely.
It’s also worth noting that not all smart lights integrate with all voice assistants, so if you already have Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri (through Apple Homekit) in your home consider whether the smart lights you’ve selected are compatible. Many are, but some will require additional hardware – so for example Hue smart lights and IKEA TRADFRI lights need to connect to HomeKit via a wireless bridge.
Also consider whether they will work with other smart home devices you have installed, such as home security cameras, video doorbells and smart lights.
Are smart lights worth the money?
Smart light bulbs are more expensive than traditional incandescent bulbs, which may leave you wondering if they are worth the money. However, we think they very much are worth it.
As we've already mentioned, the best smart light bulbs are LED, which have a longer lifespan than their incandescent counterparts. On top of that they also use less energy, which is not only good for the environment, but also has less of an impact on your wallet too. When you couple this with a longer lifespan, the investment in smart lights is most definitely worth it.
How do smart light bulbs work?
Like the best smart home devices, smart lights use wireless technologies to connect to your smartphone and allow you to control the bulb from an app.
Many smart bulbs use Bluetooth to pair directly to your phone, but these smart lights can’t be controlled when you’re in a different room, or further away, because Bluetooth is a point-to-point connection. Some lights, such as recent Hue ones, can connect to a dedicated hub or work on Bluetooth, but the latter option means you only get some of their features.
If you want to control your smart lights when you’re away from home, look for bulbs that either have a hub, such as Philips Hue, or use a cloud service - for example, LIFX - that can relay commands from your smartphone to the cloud and back to the smart light, if you’re not connected to the same Wi-Fi network.
Our article about how smart lights work offer further in-depth reading.
Can you put smart bulbs in any lamp?
In most cases its possible to replace your existing bulb with a smart light, however you will need to check that the smart light is available in the same fitting your current bulb uses. Most smart lights come in screw or bayonet fitting, while some brands also offer GU10s and Candle Bulbs.
In some cases, smart light bulbs are bulkier that standard bulbs, for example the LIFX A19/A60 bulb, which may mean in some cases it protrudes from your existing lamp or shade - a look, which you may not be happy with. So always check the dimensions of the smart light against your existing bulb.
It's also important to remember, that once you swap out an existing bulb for a smart light and pair it with the relevant app, you'll need to use the app or a voice assistant to turn it on and off. If you use the light's own switch, once its turned off, it can no longer be controlled by the app or compatible voice assistant.
How we test smart lights
To compare the best smart lights we evaluate how simple they are to install and control. We assess how quickly they respond to commands such as dimming or brightening the smart light bulbs, as well as changing the color and creating groups of smart light bulbs that can be controlled at the same time, both when we're at home and when we’re away from our property.
We also assess each design on any voice control capabilities and it’s home automation features. For each model we wanted to know how much choice in different light fittings were offered, the extra kit such as hubs, dimmer switches and motions that’s also available for the smart lights and that it didn’t require reading a thick instruction manual before use.
