THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO…

Smart lighting is more flexible, more convenient, more controllable and much more fun than normal lighting. Explore your options, from simple solutions to entire ecosystems

Words: Carrie Marshall

IMAGE SOURCE: IKEA

As the days get shorter and the nights get darker it’s the perfect time to reimagine and refresh your home lighting to make your home even more cosy, comfortable and inviting. Maybe you want to wake up more gently in the mornings, or banish blue light before bed. You might want to extend your movie or game beyond the screen and onto the walls, change the lighting to suit your mood, or set a spooky scene for Halloween. With smart lights you can do all of these things and more, and there’s never been a better time to buy. There’s a huge range of products to suit every kind of home, task, design and budget, and smart lighting is more affordable, more flexible and easier to use than ever before.

Smart lights are bulbs or lights with a network connection built-in. That’s important, because the usual online emporiums are packed with very cheap remote-controlled bulbs and light strips that are many things, but they are not smart: you can’t control them with a smart home app or a smart speaker. Smart lights connect wirelessly to your home network either directly over Wi-Fi or via a wireless hub that’s connected to your router, and you can then control them via the system’s app, a smart home system such as Apple’s Home app or a compatible smart speaker.

VARY THE SCENE

With white lights you can typically change the brightness and the colour temperature – how warm or cool the white light is – but many bulbs and LED light strips enable you to change the colours too. You can save different colour schemes as light ‘recipes’, so for example you might have a lighting recipe for dinnertime and something quite different for reading or having your early morning coffee. Many apps also enable you to turn the lights on or off when you get home or go out, and to programme routines to wake you up in the morning or help you get to sleep at night.