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

Ready to turn your house into a smart home? Replacing your dumb bulbs with smart ones is perhaps the easiest way to start. Many smart bulbs can be screwed into existing light sockets, and they can be controlled remotely, put on schedules, change colors, and more.

If you’re feeling more ambitious, you can venture into smart string lights, light strips, wall and ceiling fixtures, smart lamps, and even smart lighting for the yard or other outdoor areas.

Our guide to the best smart lighting can help you navigate the thicket of options, from the various smart light manufacturers (like Philips Hue, LIFX, Nanoleaf, and Wyze) to the connectivity standards (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Matter). We’ll also let you know which voice assistants (like Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google Assistant) work with which lights.

TechHive’s editors and contributors have been testing smart bulbs and lighting products practically since the category was invented. We continuously test the latest smart lights, accessories, and the apps that control them. We also have deep experience with a broad range of smart lighting devices, from smart A19 bulbs and color light strips to outdoor lighting and touch-sensitive light panels. You can trust us to guide you to the best smart lights for your home, office, back yard, and more.

Our top picks in smart lighting products.

What to look for when shopping for smart lights.

With their rainbow of hues and myriad party tricks, color LEDs get all the press in the world of smart lighting. It’s fun stuff, but the reality is that most of us will rarely find much of a need to turn all the lights in the house blue or red—unless it’s time to celebrate our team winning the World Series. Even then, you’ll probably want to turn them all back to white after the celebration.

White light is also essential in its own right, as today there is plenty of science to show how various shades of white—with variations in color temperature—impact our psychological state. Cool light that’s closer to blue has an energizing effect, and is best in the morning. Warm light is relaxing, and is best after the sun goes down. Note, however, that not every white LED smart bulb is color-temperature-tunable. Check out the specs before you buy.

White smart bulbs downplay the party attributes that are a staple of color-tunable bulbs. On the other hand, white smart bulbs are less expensive than color bulbs, making it more affordable to roll them out in multiple rooms.

Three control technologies continue to vie for leadership in the smart bulb market (Z-Wave is a major contender in smart lighting, but you won’t encounter it in bulbs—just in switches, plug-in modules, control panels, and smart-home hubs).

Zigbee : Bulbs that use the popular smart-home networking protocol require a bridge to communicate with your home Wi-Fi network. This is the technology Philips has adopted for its Hue lineup, but it’s not the only one.

: Bulbs that use the popular smart-home networking protocol require a bridge to communicate with your home Wi-Fi network. This is the technology Philips has adopted for its Hue lineup, but it’s not the only one. Wi-Fi : This class of bulb talks directly to your Wi-Fi router, no hub or bridge required. LIFX and TP-Link both manufacture excellent Wi-Fi smart bulbs, but neither enterprise comes close to Signify’s Philips Hue lineup in terms of the depth and breadth of the Hue ecosystem.

: This class of bulb talks directly to your Wi-Fi router, no hub or bridge required. LIFX and TP-Link both manufacture excellent Wi-Fi smart bulbs, but neither enterprise comes close to Signify’s Philips Hue lineup in terms of the depth and breadth of the Hue ecosystem. Bluetooth: These bulbs skip your home network altogether and pair directly with your smartphone or tablet. As such, they can’t be controlled from outside your home. GE and a number of other manufacturers make Bluetooth bulbs, some of enhanced quality than others. Signify has not long ago added Bluetooth radios to its Philips Hue line of smart bulbs, which eliminates the need to deploy the Philips Hue Bridge. Taking the bridge out of the equation reduces the overall cost of deployment, but adds some limitations. You can read more in our review of the new Philips Hue bulbs.

Each of these technologies has pros and cons, so before you attempt to settle on a specific bulb, first try to determine which tech is right for you. If you want to hook your bulbs into a broader smart-home system—such as SmartThings or Nest—Bluetooth bulbs are out. You can control more than one bulb with your phone, but you can’t connect it to sensors or other systems inside your home. Don’t like the idea of pairing a bulb to your phone? A Wi-Fi bulb will work best for you, though you won’t have quite as many options as you’ll find with a Zigbee product.

There’s a significant argument about the best way to install smart lighting, and two approaches present themselves. You can either go with expensive smart bulbs and control them all individually, or you can use cheap dumb bulbs and install smart switches to control all the lights on that circuit. Both approaches make sense: With smart bulbs, the biggest issue is cost, but there’s also complexity to deal with. While bulbs can usually be grouped based on location, this is only as intuitive to manage as the bulb control app.

Smart switches, on the other hand, are far more complicated to install—to the point where some individuals might be uncomfortable dealing with exposed wiring and would prefer to hire an electrician. Smart switches, however, provide more flexibility in many installations.

Habituated from years of flipping hard-wired switches, many clients (or their children) will instinctively use the wall switch to turn the lights out when they leave a room. Once that happens, all the apps in the world won’t be able to turn the light back on until the switch is returned to the on position. While this won’t be an issue if you install smart switches, they can’t change a bulb’s color or color temperature.

That mentioned, smart bulbs, no matter what the technology, still won’t be right for everyone. Notably, most of these bulbs cannot be dimmed via a hardwired wall switch (it messes with the power going to the radio, rendering them useless). A few will fail even if a dimmer is present on the circuit and dialed up to full power.

The good news is that bulb prices are going down, so it’s easier to get started with smart bulbs and less punishing should you find that a product doesn’t work for you.

Frequently asked questions about smart lighting.

1. Do smart lights require a hub? 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 superior responsiveness than bulbs that connect via Wi-Fi. 2. Can you control smart bulbs when you’re away from home? 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. 3. What’s the difference between tunable white bulbs and dimmable white bulbs? “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 superior 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. 4. What’s the benefit of grouping smart lights together? 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. 5. How do you put a smart bulb back into pairing mode? 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.

Other notable smart lights we’ve reviewed.

We’ve evaluated many other smart lights. If none of our top picks check all the boxes for you, take a look at these other products. We’ve also listed some smart lights to avoid.

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