Best smart lighting 2025: Smart bulbs, string lights, outdoor, and more

Price When Reviewed:

$49.99

What we like about the Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance smart bulb

Philips (now known as Signify) was one of the first players in this market, and the company’s experience shows. The addition Bluetooth support obviates the need for the $60 Philips Hue Bridge (although most smart home denizens will want the Bridge anyway). Signify’s Philips Hue lighting ecosystem is the industry’s deepest and broadest, with bulbs of every shape and size imaginable, not to mention lighting fixtures landscape lighting.

Who should buy the Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance smart bulb

Just about anyone looking to get started with smart lighting would do well with the Philips Hue White and Color Ambience smart bulb. It offers easy setup, doesn’t require the Hue Bridge (although you can always add one later), works with Alexa, Apple HomeKit, and Google Assistant, and boasts terrific reliability (our editors have been using them for years and have yet to report any serious failures). And while Hue bulbs tend to be a tad pricier than the competition, they’re worth the extra cost.

Price When Reviewed:

$34.99 for a 4-pack when reviewed. Price as of May 13, 2022 is $42.99 for a 4-pack; $22.99 for a 2-pack

Why we like the Wyze Bulb Color

Wyze Labs can’t match Philips Hue in terms of the breadth of its smart lighting ecosystem, but it beats Signify’s brand by a country mile in terms of pricing, and Wyze has a much broader array of product offerings when it comes to other areas of the smart home–most importantly in terms of home security. Wyze also now offers an excellent BR30 color smart bulb.

Who should buy the Wyze Bulb Color

Wyze’s color bulbs are among the most affordable on the market, and you don’t need a bridge to add one–or many–to your home. They’ll also work in tandem with your Wyze Cam, meaning you can set your Wyze camera to trigger a Wyze bulb if the cam detects motion. But the Wyze Bulb Color doesn’t support Matter, which means it’s a no-go for Apple HomeKit users, and the Wyze lighting ecosystem can’t match Philips Hue’s.

Price When Reviewed:

$24.95 (price as of November 6, 2024: $29.99)

Why we like the Philips Hue White Ambiance (Bluetooth + Zigbee) smart bulb

Our choice won’t surprise anyone who’s been following this market. Philips dominates this space and is also our top pick for best color LED smart bulb. The latest Hue bulbs can be controlled via Bluetooth or Zigbee (the latter requires the Philips Hue Bridge), they deliver high-quality light, and are backed by a strong warranty. We only received the BR30 form factor for our review, but apart from form factor, that bulb is the same as the A19.

Who should buy the Philips Hue White Ambiance (Bluetooth + Zigbee) smart bulb

As with Philips Hue’s color smart bulb, we recommend the Hue White Ambiance for most folks who want to add smart lighting to their homes, although the A19 form factor is more appropriate for lamps and the like). It’s easy to set up, works with all the major smart home ecosystems, and the Hue Bridge is entirely optional (although certainly nice to have). The Hue White Ambiance is also considerably more affordable than the Hue White and Color Ambiance bulb, so peppering them around your home won’t break the bank.

Read our full Philips Hue White Ambiance (Bluetooth + Zigbee) review

Why we like the Cree Lighting Connected Max Smart LED bulb

You can’t beat the price of the Cree Lighting Connected Max Smart LED considering you get both tunable white and full color. Cree Lighting’s Connected Max family includes a full range of form factors, too, including BR30, PAR38, vintage filament, tape lighting, and even retrofit downlights. It’s not HomeKit compatible, but it does work with Siri Shortcuts.

Who should buy the Cree Lighting Connected Max Smart LED bulb

If you’re on a tight budget and absolutely don’t want a smart bulb that requires a bridge, the Cree Lighting Connected Max Smart LED is your best bet. It delivers impressive lighting quality for the price, you can easily expand your collection of Cree lights with other form factors, and it works with Alexa and Google Assistant.

Why we like the Philips Hue Lightstrip Plus

The Philips Hue Lightstrip Plus makes for a great and easy way to add accent lighting to kitchen counters, stairways, and other indoor areas. The Philips Hue ecosystem is bigger than any other smart lighting solution, but Hue products are also much more expensive than the competition.

Who should buy the Philips Hue Lightstrip Plus

It may be pricier than other light strips on the market, but we still recommend the Philips Hue Lightstrip Plus even if you’re on a budget. The reason: Smart light strips are notoriously prone to failure, particularly the cheap ones. But a Hue Lightstrip Plus has been working flawlessly for years in a TechHive editor’s kitchen, and Hue has been good about replacing defective units if the need arises. Aside from reliability, the Hue Lightstrip Plus benefits from Hue’s robust ecosystem, support for all the major smart home platforms, and the fact that the Hue Bridge is optional.

Price When Reviewed:

$24.99

Why we like the TP-Link Kasa Smart Light Strip KL400L5

TP-Link built more features into this light strip than we expected for the price, and it even offers one feature that our top pick doesn’t: animation sequences. The Philips Hue product, on the other hand, feels much more durable, and you can add extensions to the end of a strip. The biggest factor in TP-Link’s favor? The price tag.

Who should buy the TP-Link Kasa Smart Light Strip KL400L5

If you must spend less on a smart light strip, we’ll point you in TP-Link’s direction. While you can’t extend this light strip, you can put it on a schedule, group it with other Kasa lights, and use it with Alexa, Google Assistant, and Samsung SmartThings, and you can even tee up some nifty animated lighting scenes.

Price When Reviewed:

$199.99

Why we like the Nanoleaf Shapes Hexagons

This is the first of Nanoleaf’s Shapes interactive light panels, and it set the stage for several other equally fun versions. This modular lighting system won’t illuminate a room–that’s not it’s intended purpose–but it can set a mood like nothing else on the market today.

Who should buy the Nanoleaf Shapes Hexagons

Whether you’re a Twitch streamer who wants to add some eye candy to their setup or you simply want to decorate your office or another room, Nanoleaf’s Shapes light panels are the way to go. They’re easy to install–and, crucially, remove when the time comes. They also work with Matter (following a software update), and their touch functionality remains unmatched.

Price When Reviewed:

$89.97

Why we like the LIFX SuperColor Ceiling

The best feature LIFX’s SuperColor Ceiling light may well be how easy it is to install. Thanks to a cleverly designed mounting bracket and a handy clip that holds the fixture a few inches below the ceiling, the LIFX Ceiling light has an almost idiot-proof setup process. We also love the two-zone lighting as well as the Matter support.

Who should buy the LIFX SuperColor Ceiling

With its easy installation, the LIFX SuperColor Ceiling is a great choice for those who might otherwise balk at installing a smart light in their ceiling. And thanks to its Matter support, the LIFX light will work in Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings households

Price When Reviewed:

$279.99 when reviewed, current price is $339.99

Why we like the Philips Hue Lily

Signify’s Philips Hue product line includes the most complete collection of outdoor and landscape LED lighting. In addition to the Lily spotlight, there’s the Lily XL spotlight, the Calla Bollard light, the Econic Outdoor Pedestal, the Amarant linear outdoor light, no fewer than 9 wall or ceiling-mount outdoor lights, and even outdoor LED light strips. That diversity, and the high-quality design and construction of these luminaires, justifies Signify’s high price tags.

Who should buy the Philips Hue Lily

Already invested in the Philips Hue ecosystem for your indoor lights? If so, then ponying up for Hue outdoor lights is a no-brainer, and the Lily spotlight is a great place to start. It’s weatherized for the elements, works with all the major smart home ecosystems (now that the Hue Bridge has been updated with Matter), and plays nice with a variety of Hue outdoor accessories, including the Hue Outdoor Sensor.

Price When Reviewed:

$149.00 (spotlight 3-pack). Reviewed with Hampton Bay Hubspace transformer ($100) and 75 feet of Cerrowire 16/2 low-voltage wire ($29). Price as reviewed: $278

Why we like the Hampton Bay Hubspace Landscape Spotlights

These budget-priced landscape spotlights deserve to be compared to the much-pricier Philips Hue Lily product line. The trade-offs include less-robust construction, less-sophisticated wiring, slightly dimmer brightness, and a less-complete smart lighting ecosystem, but you will spend significantly less money, especially if you deploy a lot of lights. Buyers should also be aware, however, that there is a long history of retailers abandoning their proprietary smart home platforms. For the record: We have not seen any indication of this from Home Depot; the company has released several new Hubspace products since we received this kit for review.

Who should buy the Hampton Bay Hubspace Landscape Spotlights

If you’re not already a Philips Hue user or you don’t have a Hue-sized budget, you can still up your outdoor lighting game with this affordable kit from Home Depot. It’s relatively easy to deploy, works with an increasingly wide range of Hubspace lighting devices, an–so far–Home Depot appears to be sticking by its smart home brand, unlike other retailers we’ve seen.

Price When Reviewed:

$129.99

Why we like the Philips Hue Calla

The Philips Hue Calla outdoor pathway light adds sophisticated safety to outdoor walkways and patios, and Philips has the most complete smart lighting ecosystem in the industry. But you’ll need an outdoor outlet to power this and all other Hue landscape lighting, and the components are very expensive.

Who should buy the Philips Hue Calla

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Philips Hue’s lighting products are well worth their premium prices, particularly when it comes to outdoor lights like the Calla. That makes them the best choice for those who want to light up their outdoor pathways, especially if you’re already a Hue user, and they’ll work seamlessly with any other Hue lights in your yard.

Why we like the Ring Smart Lighting Solar Pathlight

Ring’s smart lighting system isn’t as broad as Signify’s Philips Hue, but it covers the bases, and these Ring pathlights boast a couple of features that Hue’s don’t: solar charging as well as built-in motion detection. While we were initially concerned about the all-plastic housing, we’ve had one of the lights deployed for more than two years and haven’t detected significant deterioration.

Who should buy the Ring Smart Lighting Solar Pathlight

Have a Ring Alarm protecting your home? If that’s the case, going with Ring outdoor lighting is a natural next step, and the Ring Smart Lighting Solar Pathlight has much to recommend it, provided you’re already using the Ring Smart Lighting Bridge.

Price When Reviewed:

12-foot/24 lights: $159.99

Why we like the Enbrighten Wi-Fi Café Lights

Jasco’s Enbrighten Wi-Fi Café Lights are certainly expensive, but they’re also very pretty, highly customizable, and exceptionally durable for year-round outdoor installations. There’s also surprisingly little competition in this admittedly specialized segment of outdoor lighting. Signify has outdoor Philips Hue light strips, for example, but that’s a very different look from café-style lights.

Who should buy the Enbrighten Wi-Fi Café Lights

Provided you have the budget, the Enbrighten Wi-Fi Café Lights is a good choice for decorative outdoor string lights that respond to Alexa and Google Assistant voice commands. These café lights are also a great pick if you have a lot of ground to cover, given that the strings can be daisy-chained together.

Price When Reviewed:

50-foot, 36-light kit: $159.99 (as reviewed); 100-foot, 72-light kit: $249.99

Why we like Enbrighten Eternity Lights

The winter holidays aren’t the only time it’s fun to decorate your house, but no one wants to drag the ladder out of storage several times a year to hang and then take down outdoor lighting. With the Enbrighten Eternity Lights, you don’t have to: Once you’ve installed them, they can stay up forever and you can program for every season–or just highlight your home’s architecture with tunable white light. They connect to your Wi-Fi network, of course, and they can operate on a schedule, with geofencing, or with voice commands spoken to Alexa or Google smart speakers.

Who should buy Enbrighten Eternity Lights

You don’t need to be a smart home enthusiast to enjoy these lights, all you really need is a Wi-Fi router, a smartphone, an outdoor outlet you can plug their power supply into, and the desire to decorate your home with light. Enbrighten Eternity Lights can glow in lots of colors as well as different temperatures of white light, and they can be programmed to flash, sequence, and dance in preset patterns or you can customize your own lighting scenes. These lights are compatible with Amazon Echo and Google Home ecosystems, but if your home revolves around Apple Home, you want to standardize with Matter, or if you like to use IFTTT to for cross-platform automations, you’ll want to know that these lights are compatible with any of them.

As we noted above, if a smart light doesn’t use either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to connect to your home wireless router or your phone, it will likely require a separate hub to bridge the gap. 

For example, Ring lighting products, which use Ring’s proprietary wireless protocol, require the Ring Lighting Bridge, while (older) Zigbee-only Hue lights need the Hue Bridge to connect to your home network. 

But there are plenty of smart lights that do connect directly to either Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or both. Wyze and Cree smart bulbs connect via Wi-Fi, for instance, while most recent Philips Hue lights can connect directly to your phone via Bluetooth. (The latest Hue bulbs boast Bluetooth and Zigbee radios).

Of course, there are benefits to smart lights that use a bridge or a hub—namely range. When connecting via Zigbee, for example, Philips Hue bulbs double as range extenders, with one Hue bulb able to connect to the next, rather than each bulb having to make a direct connection to your Wi-Fi router. A smart hub may also enable better responsiveness than bulbs that connect via Wi-Fi. 

In most cases, yes. Both Wi-Fi-enabled and hub-controlled smart lights typically can be controlled from anywhere, using either the manufacturer’s app or via the app of a compatible smart home ecosystem (Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, and so on). The same goes with smart lights that rely on a hub, like the aforementioned Ring lights. 

A key exception are Bluetooth-only smart bulbs. As we mentioned earlier, Bluetooth has a limited range—just 33 feet or so, and you must be in the same room to control a Bluetooth smart light with your phone. That’s a key factor to consider if you buy a Bluetooth- and Zigbee-enabled Philips Hue light without a Hue Bridge—no Bridge, no out-of-home control. 

“Tunable” white bulbs allow you to tune the white color to different color temperatures, from warm while (2200K, or Kelvin) to soft white (3000K) to bright white (4000K) and daylight (6500K). Warm white, for example, is a nice, relaxing color temperature for a dining room or bedroom, while cooler color temperatures are better suited for workspaces, such as a kitchen counter, a desk, or a workshop bench. 

“Dimmable” bulbs, as you probably guessed, allow you to change the brightness of the emitted light, from very dim to 100-percent brightness. 

Some smart bulbs are both tunable and dimmable, while others are only dimmable. In the latter case, such bulbs are fixed at a specific white-color temperature. Before you buy a dimmable-only bulb, be sure that the set temperature is to your liking. 

White you may occasionally want to control only an individual smart light, it’s far more convenient to take change of a whole group of lights at once, and this is a feature we expect from most smart bulbs. 

Generally speaking, you’ll be able to group lights in a room—meaning, for example, you’ll have your “Bedroom” lights, your “Kitchen” lights, and so on. Some smart lighting ecosystems (like Philips Hue’s) may allow you to group “zones” of lights, such as all upstairs or downstairs lights.

Once your lights are properly grouped, you’ll be able to control all the lights in a room or zone with a tap, or by asking you voice assistant, “Turn on kitchen lights” or “Set bedroom lights to 60 percent.” 

Besides grouping lights, you should also be able to create lighting scenes that automatically set your lights to predetermined brightnesses or color temperatures. For example, a “Movie” scene in your living room might turn off most of your lights while dimming those in an adjacent hallway. You can usually trigger light scenes with a tap within an app or via a voice command. 

Out of the box, smart bulbs are usually already in pairing mode, meaning they’ll be discoverable by a compatible smart app as soon as they’re screwed in and/or powered on. But what if you want to put a smart bulb back into pairing mode? After all, with a standard A19 bulb, there’s no obvious button to push. 

The precise answer depends on the manufacturer, but generally speaking, the trick is to turn the bulb on and off a set number of times in rapid succession. Check your user manual for the exact details.