Best Smart Lighting Systems 2021

Everyone needs their home to be lit. LED bulbs made a big improvement to the home lighting market when they arrived, vastly reducing the power consumption while also removing the annoying warm-up time of the older energy saving bulbs. With electronics already in the bulbs and plenty of power available, it makes sense to add more connectivity options and to make the bulbs smart. There are two main ways this is achieved, direct connection to your Wi-Fi network or via hub which itself connects to your network. Hubs tend to be expensive but do make it easier to control large smart lighting setups.

Smart bulbs can then be configured through a mobile application or connected to a smart home system such as Alexa and Google Assistant. Many but not all smart lighting systems work with Apple’s HomeKit, so if this s a requirement for you, make sure to check compatibility. Smart lighting systems can often react to events through other integrations too. Some bulbs are available in various temperatures of white like traditional bulbs, whereas others offer a much larger colour range, though typically at a greater cost.

To help you pick the right lights for you, we’ve drawn up a list of the best smart lighting system in 2021.

The Philips Hue Bulbs were basically the first smart bulbs on the market. Philips has used that time and experience to build out their product and feature stack and so offers the most comprehensive system. Unfortunately, this does also come with a price premium. If you’re wanting to kit out a single room with less than 10 bulbs you can control them directly via Bluetooth. This does come with a limited feature set though.

For the full experience, and to be able to kit out your home with up to 50 hue bulbs and light strips you will need to purchase a Hue Bridge, though this is included in many of the starter kits. The bridge connects directly to your router via an ethernet cable and can then act as a control centre for your smart lights via the mobile app. one thing to be aware of is the history of security issues with the Hue system, so make sure to regularly check for and apply software updates.

The Wyze Bulb offers a bit of a different approach to smart lighting than Philip’s Hue system. Each bulb directly connects to your Wi-Fi network rather than needing to connect to a separate and expensive hub. The bulbs themselves are also cheaper, especially if you want the white-only variant. You can configure the bulbs individually or in groups through the app or through Alexa or Google Assistant.

The lack of HomeKit support may make them annoying to combine with some pre-existing smart home products. While the bulbs can be dimmed, they have a limit as to how dim they can get and that may not be as low as you want. Connecting each device to your Wi-Fi makes large setups awkward to manage compared to using a separate hub. You can configure a range of automatic actions such as reactions to events on other Wyze products or a vacation mode to make it look like you’re still home.

The Lifx Mini is another hubless smart bulb that is designed specifically for smaller light fixtures. Most smart bulbs are large and heavy, this makes them awkward if not impossible to fit in smaller lamps such as desk lamps. These bulbs are small and light making them ideal for this application. They even achieve this without compromising on brightness or colour range.

The bulb integrates with a broad array of smart home assistants easily but the first time connection to our phone can be a pain if you’re not used to dealing with smart device connection issues. The app allows you to configure 9 scenes and 7 effects such as candle flickering and music sync. They are quite pricy though, especially the colour bulb which costs about the same as the class-leading Hue bulbs.

The Nanoleaf Shapes are an unusual type of smart light. They only reach a brightness of 100 lumens, so are not really meant for full room lighting. Instead, they’re suited for mood lighting or accenting. Connecting them to our smart home ecosystem is easy with plenty of integrations. You can easily mount them on any wall with the included double-sided wall safe tape. They also include screw mounts, but you’ll have to provide the screws and wall plugs.

The shapes can be placed in any design as long as at least one side of a shape touches the side of another. They will transmit power and lighting instructions through the network. You can configure them to react to their surroundings such as your local weather, your music, or the colours of your TV or computer screen. They are very expensive, especially as they’re not bright enough to actually light your room, but they’re a great way of adding some cool extra colour to a room.

That was our round-up of the best smart lighting systems in 2021. Have you got a smart lighting system? Let us know your experiences and what features you like best down below.