Not too long ago, lighting was a simple part of the home improvement market. Buyers could choose between screw in and prong-based bulbs, and there might be a few LEDs or neon strip bulbs to look at, as well. Nowadays, lighting is much more complex, with an array of ‘smart’ lights competing for the attention of tech-savvy homeowners. This hotukdeals buyer's guide will introduce the concept of smart lighting and help you start your very own smart home. It's a complicated market, with new products emerging all the time, and not all of them are in the budget price range, so saving money and choosing exactly the right product can make a huge difference.
Technologists have long understood that the way we light our homes is extremely inefficient. All over the world, bulbs are working hard to illuminate empty rooms, raising power bills in the process. However, the technology required to adjust the lighting to meet human needs has taken time to develop.
The introduction of LED bulbs was a major step forward. From the 1970s onwards, these energy efficient bulbs have started to displace filament bulbs, which lose 95% of their energy as heat. In the 80s, timers connected to computers started to arrive, but these were primitive by today's standards, and relatively few people embraced them.
The 90s saw huge strides in producing cheap motion sensors, which could potentially determine when people entered the rooms of “smart” environments. Bulbs became more efficient every year, and wireless internet appeared. This combination of technologies finally allowed brands like Phillips Hue to introduce mass-market products which allowed truly flexible, energy-efficient home lighting.
The past decade has seen another key innovation: the widespread adoption of smartphones. This fourth technology enables users to control the colour, brightness, and general behaviour of their lighting, even from thousands of miles away. The stage is set for smart lights to go mainstream, and the price of key brands is well within reach of most homeowners or businesses.
At first glance, smart bulbs don't look very different from ordinary incandescent bulbs. They often have the same bulbous appearance (or spear shape in some cases), and they attach to standard sockets. But they also feature some innovations which set them apart.
Most importantly, smart bulbs include Wi-Fi connectivity. This allows them to be connected to smart hubs, which coordinate the lighting across a designated space (such as a home or workplace). It also allows you to have your smart lights interact with other devices in your home (like smart TVs or motion sensors).
Lights in smart setups can be turned on or off from almost anywhere in the world. If you are coming home and want your porch or entry corridor to be easily accessible, you can switch on bulbs before you leave the office. If you're on the beach in the Caribbean and want to turn on the bulbs to deter burglars, you can do that too.
In-home flexibility is another major bonus. With smart bulbs in place, users can dim or brighten spaces via smartphone apps, setting the scene for atmospheric movie nights, set-piece dinners, or an evening of reading with your favourite book.
These bulbs are also energy saving devices. By linking smart bulbs to motion sensors and scheduling apps, users can ensure that they only come on when people need them and that if you leave your lights on by mistake, they will turn themselves off without external intervention. You can also set them down to low settings when you aren't in the room, maintaining enough light to feel at home while wasting minimal amounts of power. It's a far cry from a home lit exclusively by old-style lighting.
Smart lighting can also be scheduled easily to suit your unique lifestyle. Everyone uses their home differently, but we all tend to have a schedule that we fit our lives around. By syncing bulbs to come on or brighten at certain times, we can save time and hassle, and free up our energies to relax, cook, socialise, read, or work.
All of that sounds pretty appealing and it's certainly a step change compared to the lighting most buyers will have grown up with. However, as a quick glance at the hotukdeals, smart light offers will show, many different products congregate under the “smart light” banner, presenting a few conundrums when making a purchase. So let's introduce some of the key products you'll encounter, and help you decide which ones are essential for your home setup.
Smart light bulbs – As we've discussed already, bulbs are the heart of most smart lighting systems, and they come in a few different forms:
Zigbee bulbs – Zigbee refers to the protocol used by these devices to communicate with home hubs, and it's the most widely used among major smart tech developers, including Phillips and Amazon. They tend to require a dedicated smart hub, though, and this can add extra costs to initial setup bills.
Wifi bulbs – Wifi bulbs have the advantage of working via regular internet routers, and they can generally be controlled via a standard app. This is convenient in some ways, but not in others. For instance, large arrays can sap your net capacity, while these bulbs tend to be less compatible with smart home systems like Amazon Echo.
Bluetooth bulbs – These bulbs are less common and use the Bluetooth communication system to interact with other devices. They tend to suffer a little from inconvenient pairing and short range, so they probably won't be the best choice for hotukdeals buyers.
Smart light switches – The humble light switch has also undergone a smart makeover. These switches are both familiar and exotic. On one hand, they can be turned off or on manually, in the traditional way. On the other, they can be manipulated via smartphone apps, giving total flexibility. Moreover, they can be connected to things like doorbells or cat flaps, turning lights on when they are required. Finally, they can deliver power consumption data to your app, letting you know whether your lighting costs are under control.
Hubs – As we noted earlier, if you choose a lighting system based around the Zigbee protocol (also known as Z-Wave), you will most likely need to buy a hub to get things started. The most popular option here is the Phillips Hue Bridge, although Samsung SmartThings and Amazon Echo also use the standard. They provide a way to mix lighting, heating, smart fridges, music playback, and many other home essentials – so buyers with broader technological ambitions will probably find them more suitable.
We briefly touched upon smart bulbs earlier, but because these devices are so important to crafting a smart lighting system, it's important to lay out their features in a bit more detail. Here are some features that should help you pick bulbs which deliver the lighting capabilities you require:
Colours – The ability to shift between different tones is one of the most exciting aspects of switching from conventional to smart bulbs. Brands like Philips Hue offer a palette of 16 million colours – more than anyone could ever need. Hue tends to be the go-to brand here, but don't pass up LIFX, which is a slightly more affordable alternative. If you want a budget option, Ikea has introduced a range called Trådfri, which keeps things simple, but offers colour shifting and clustering as standard.
Grouping – More often than not, users will want to control a single light bulb. Instead, homes and offices rely on groups of bulbs that work in synchrony. Most smart bulb manufacturers allow users to cluster bulbs and create groups to function together. Lifx and Hue both perform well here, allowing users to group bulbs via Alexa and other apps.
Lighting Strips – Brands like Phillips, Lifx, and Sylvania also offer smart strips. These aren't going to be sufficient to illuminate whole rooms, but what they can do is line bookcases or windows, creating a sense of atmosphere, and enough light to make rooms restful places to unwind. It's probably not really a case of choosing bulbs over strips, but of how to combine them in the most effective combinations.
Buyers who are already up to speed with smart technology will probably be most concerned about one core question: how to get smart lights up and running with popular smart home systems like Alexa and Google Home. Thankfully, doing so shouldn't be hard.
Smart Lights For Alexa – As we noted earlier, Z-Wave bulbs tend to be compatible with Alexa out of the box (at least when used via Amazon Echo), so those are the bulbs and switches to choose. However, it's important to note that not all Echo devices work with systems like Philips Hue.
Smart Lights For Google Home – As with Amazon Echo, not all smart bulbs will work with Google Home, so check before buying anything. However, if you have a Hue Bridge in place, getting up and running couldn't be simpler. All Hue bulbs can sync with Google Home via the Bridge, with a maximum network size of 50 bulbs. That's more than sufficient for most homes.
Before we conclude this buyer's guide, it's well worth listing a few major brands, as many of them won't be familiar to UK homeowners:
Phillips Hue – If you're seeking a high-end smart light Philips Hue is a go-to option. The most famous and most reliable smart lighting brand, Hue has been around for over a decade and offers the widest selection of colour changing bulbs, switches, plugs, and strips. With the Hue Bridge installed, Hue offers the most comprehensive range of options for creating smart lighting systems across homes and offices.
LIFX – Emerging as Hue's main competitor, LIFX focuses on offering appealing colour-shifting bulbs, voice activated interfaces and innovative products like the LIFX Mini – small but powerful bulbs to slot into any corner of the home. All LIFX devices are designed to work well with Google Home and Alexa, which is a major plus.
Hive – Owned by British Gas, Hive is a UK-based smart tech contender which offers a range of simple dimmable smart bulbs. There's nothing exceptional here, just a reliable collection of bulbs that link with the wider Hive system. The main attraction is the link-up with British Gas, which offers excellent service and setup help.
Veho – Another British contender, Veho markets the Kasa smart home system. Energy efficiency is a core feature of the firm's smart bulbs, which offer the same technical specs as Hue bulbs (such as the 16 million colour selection), and simple control via iOS and Android.
Ikea Smart Lights – The Swedish furniture giant is currently offering smart bulbs for under £10 each, so they may be worth a try (although you shouldn’t expect the same standard as premium smart ranges). When paired with a Tradfri Gateway, these cut-price bulbs can deliver impressive functionality and it’ll be far cheaper to fit your whole house with these smart bulbs than compared with Philips Hue or LIFX.
If you like the idea of controlling your living room lights from halfway around the world, or creating a dazzling light show in your kitchen, smart lighting is the innovation you've been waiting for. However, while prices are dropping, it can still cost a few hundred pounds to create a comprehensive smart lighting network. That's where saving money can be really important.
Before you buy anything, plan out your smart purchases. Not everyone needs ten multi-coloured bulbs in every room, or the Hue Bridge to glue everything together. You can do almost as well with LIFX bulbs and a simple app. So be sensible about budgeting. If necessary, plan to make a few purchases as you build your home's smart capabilities.
When it comes to purchasing, there's only one place to head: the hotukdeals smart light listings. Our directory of deals lists discounts from the UK's biggest smart lighting merchants, including Currys, John Lewis, Amazon, Ikea, Screwfix, and eBay. And you'll also find deals from manufacturers like LIFX and Phillips. So it's easy to compare prices between the biggest vendors.
If you intend to make a major investment in smart technology, buying at the right time of year can make a huge difference as well. Black Friday in November regularly sees huge smart tech reductions, but Amazon Prime Day is also worth a look. Hanging on a few months could well be the smartest decision you make.
Light bulbs have come a long way in a short period of time. The old bayonet bulb is hanging on, but nowadays buyers can light up their homes with some incredible tech. Featuring mind-bending colour changes, flexible dimmers, energy-saving systems, and flexible scheduling, smart lights are banishing old-style bulbs forever. Join the revolution and make the switch with the smart light deals at hotukdeals.
