ILLUMINATING INNOVATION: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO THE BEST SMART BULBS FOR YOUR HOME

From turning on a light by flipping a switch, smart homes have evolved to the point where lighting a room can be as easy as uttering a phrase into the air or tapping a screen on a smartphone. Forget the Clapper you saw in those infomercials from the 1980s. Smart bulbs are now like digital video recorders for lighting, letting you control things like colour and schedule to enhance your living space and suit your lifestyle. This guide finds the best smart bulbs to illuminate your home with a whole new world of light and technobabble.

TRANSFORMING HOMES WITH A TOUCH OF TECH

Smart bulbs are the entry point to the connected home. With their low cost and easy installation, they symbolise the everyday interaction with technology that has come to define our daily lives. Requiring neither a complicated wiring job nor the kind of security concerns that plague many smart home products, smart bulbs allow the homeowner to upgrade with the simplest of tools.

HOW WE ILLUMINATE OUR RECOMMENDATIONS

Understanding what’s out there is also crucial when choosing the best smart bulbs for your home. Over the course of one to five days, we pit our lighting contenders against a pair of nondescript Ikea lamps in the living room to test everything from colour vibrancy and range, to brightness and user-control ease. Compatibility with a broader smart-home ecosystem, including smart speakers, inform how we test as well, if not more. Our advice about smart lights isn’t just about bulbs. It’s about signalling a smarter way of living.

A SPECTRUM OF CHOICES: THE TOP PICKS FOR SMART ILLUMINATION

We’ve thoroughly tested hundreds of smart bulbs and, after much deliberation, just a handful have risen to the top, and ultimately earned their place in our homes. Each bulb stands out as the best of its class, whether it’s for colour-accuracy, brightness, integration with Apple Home or any other smart home platform, or simply how they can help to create the perfect mood and atmosphere for any setting or activity.

Spotlight on Lifx A19: A Leader for Apple Home Enthusiasts

Updated June 2024: As the best bulbs for use in a connected Apple Home environment, Lifx A19 bulbs provide unmatched Apple HomeKit integration and ease of set-up, and are extremely bright and beautifully hued home-brighteners for Apple users.

The Timeless Appeal of Philips Hue Soft Warm White

If you want the look of the old-school filament bulb, but would rather not stick with incandescents, our recommendation is the Philips Hue Soft Warm White bulbs. These smart filament bulbs deliver the intimate, retro feel of incandescents, but grounded in today’s technology, providing a warm glow that can be tweaked to create a relaxing environment.

EMBRACE CONVENIENCE WITH SMART CONTROLS

One of the exceptional benefits of smart bulbs is their capability for a variety of control mechanisms. Forget stumbling for the light switch in the dark, a simple voice instruction or smartphone tap can light up the room. If voice control appeals to you, pairing smart speakers or displays with your smart bulbs creates a whole new realm of ease and accessibility.

THE ENLIGHTENED HOME: SMART BULBS AS LIFESTYLE ENHANCERS

In many ways, the smart bulb represents the ethos of the smart home. Convenience, safety and comfort or atmosphere can all be bolstered by adapting illumination around the activities and moods needed. And because smart bulbs are more energy-efficient than regular bulbs, they are also a cheap addition to the home, further hinting at the sense in embracing the smart home.

LIGHTING THE WAY FORWARD

Smart homes might be the next big thing, but smart bulbs are the gateway drug to the revolution. They are simple enough to be the first smart thing you will get, and important enough to be the first (and ideally last) element you’ll need to create a smart home.

DISCOVERING THE ESSENCE OF HOME

And at home, at least, there remains something more fundamental about the meaning of this place – it becomes where you live, where you spend leisure time, and where you invite others around to marvel at how you make it suit your tastes and moods, the rhythms of your life, and (more thank you would ever admit to in polite company) the odd blemish, the way your loved ones relax, and the odd aromas that cling to the air. The advent of smart bulbs adds something else to this mix: the chance to make your own home a little closer to your vision of what it should be, based not merely on convenience but on steadily finer gradations of what makes home feel like your home, and how you choose to remember it. It’s another technique in your arsenal to make your home yours, reminding us that, as technology marches on, the prospects for further redefinition and enhancement of this ideal through intelligent tools may delightfully seem endless; after all, there’s something elemental in the notion. This is light that we live by.