Smart lights have a range of uses, some you may already know with others coming as more of a surprise.

We went out and found the most common and practical uses for smart lights, to help you decide if they’re worth your time and money.

While not all uses will be relevant to your lifestyle and home, sometimes even a single use can make smart lights a worthy investment.

Looking for more information on smart lights? We recommend heading over to our complete smart lighting guide.

Smart Lighting Uses

To make things easier we’ve ranked our top 6 uses from most to least impactful, however you might find a lower ranked use more beneficial to you.

Each use also has a few examples, to help you better understand how it might impact your day-to-day life, emphasising real life scenarios.

These uses apply to most smart bulbs, lamps, switches and more, where a particular use only applies to one technology or product – we’ve highlighted it.

1. More ways to control your lights

We’re not sure why this isn’t talked about more, but the biggest benefit of owning smart lights is the fact you can control them in various ways.

If you’d like to continue using a traditional switch but installed only smart light bulbs there are wireless switches accessories which you can purchase and stick onto your wall.

Here’s the most common ways of controlling your smart lights.

1. App on your phone
2. Voice commands (Alexa / Google Assistant / Siri)
3. Wireless accessories (switches, motion sensors, dials)
4. Schedules, timers and automation (when the sun sets, every morning at 7am)

While it can be argued that some of these are only added conveniences, the extra features and functions like changing the colour of the light really does make them stand out on their own.

2. Schedule when your lights turn on and off

One of the best things about smart lights is the fact you can automate when they turn on and off, which might not seem like a big deal at first but has many upsides, for example.

1. Have your lights slowly wake you up in the morning, before your alarm goes off
2. Set lights around your home to turn on when the sun goes down, then completely off when you go to bed
3. Get your lights to shift to a more warmer orange tone before bed, to help you sleep better
4. Set lights to alarms, so when the alarm goes off a light strobes or changes colour

You’ll find you quickly get used to having lights that wake you up in the morning, and also turn off when it’s time for bed. Schedules really do add a lot of conveniences, that you didn’t know you wanted.

3. Group lights together for better control

Controlling a single light is ok, but controlling multiple lights at the same time is great.

With custom light groupings, you can turn off a whole floor, or a single room. You can go as simple or complex as you like, but here’s some of the benefits to grouping lights.

1. Group all the lights in your home | So with a single press of a button or voice command you can turn them all off
2. Open design kitchen and dining room? | Why not setup a group to keep the mood consistent across all rooms
3. Two story house? | Group all the lights on the ground floor and turn them off when you head upstairs to bed

Most smart lighting solutions offer the ability to create numerous groups, giving added flexibility to your lighting control. You can certainly go overboard, though a few correctly setup groups make a lot of difference.

4. Added home security and safety

Extra security and safety around your home may not jump out as an area that smart lights can be used for, but they have a few.

1. Security | If you’re going on holiday, have your lights turn on at different intervals at night to make it seem like someone is home
2. Security | Door/window sensors that’ll trigger your lights automatically as soon as they’re opened
3. Safety | Motion sensors that trigger your lights when you arrive home, or head to the bathroom in the middle of night – great for elderly or kids
4. Safety | Want to know if your kids are walking around at night without waking up everyone else in the home with a sound?
5. Safety | When your smoke or fire alarm goes off, setup lights to lead everyone to the nearest exit, by only turning on the lights that are near an exit

Lights that turn on automatically can be a great deterrent to would be robbers, not only do they make them think twice they’ll alert you that someone is there.

5. Control lighting scenes and mood

Often underestimated in terms of impact, it really is something you need to see to understand sadly. While having a room filled with colour lights might not be something you want or need there’s a few other ways you can set a mood.

1. Ready for bed | Lights dim and change to a more orange tone to promote better sleep
2. Date night | Setup your lights to dim down for a more immersive dinner
3. House get together / party | Set your lights to strobe or slowly change colour
4. Need to study | Adjust the brightness and change them to a cooler tone to keep you more alert and awake

One thing you may also not know is several smart light brands come with dimming functionality built in, so you can finally have dimmable lights in your home.

6. More ways to control your lights

While we talked about controlling your smart lights in the first use, we wanted to expand on this area with an emphasis on the accessories that you can add.

1. Motion Sensors | Trigger lights when you arrive home, enter the front door or walk into the bathroom
2. Door/Window Sensor | Have lights trigger when a door or window is opened
3. Light Sensor | Lights that turn on when it comes dark, like the outdoor lights around your home

Accessories will add some of the most conveniences to your home, along side the fact they’ll make it feel like you’re living in the future.

Summary

You’ve probably found a few uses that would benefit your home or lifestyle but now comes the important question, is it worth the time and more importantly, the money to invest in them?

We wish we could give you an answer but this is the part that you’ll need to make the finally decision, for some people it’s definitely worth it.

This topic is huge and while we didn’t touch on certain uses, that’s due to the uses being for a specific group of people which we’re going to cover later on.

Have some real impactful uses that we didn’t list here? Why not head over to our contact page in our footer to let us know.