I’ll admit it. I was wrong. Wildly colorful lighting is delightful for your smart home — well, outdoors, at least.
Smart lighting is one of my favorite features of the smart home — it combines convenience with ambiance, letting you change the entire look of your room with just a press of a button. But, other than the occasional pop of color, mostly in my kids’ rooms and outdoors around the holidays, I never found much use for color-changing lights. I prefer the subtler effects of tunable white light combined with dimming to set the scene indoors, and that preference also extended to outdoor lighting. Until this summer.
With an influx of new outdoor lighting products over the last year or so, I decided to see how far outdoor smart lighting has come: Are products with color-changing and gradient lighting, along with RGBICW (where you get colors and whites and can control LEDs individually), worth the extra investment, or are they still more garish than gorgeous?
To find out, I tested various string lights, “permanent” exterior lighting, a giant lamppost, and a wall of light in my yard. Overall, smart outdoor lighting has come a long way, and while there’s still potential to go over the top, today’s options offer a surprisingly effective blend of fun and style — if you stick with one brand.
Strategically placed architectural lighting has always had the potential to elevate a home’s curb appeal or your backyard party vibe, but connected, color-changing outdoor lighting offers several advantages. First, one setup works year-round. Instead of changing out your lights for different seasons, you can just use an app to change the look. And if you’re investing in smart lighting, having the option to add color gives you more flexibility.
I have Govee permanent outdoor Prism lights installed on my home, and while most of the time I stick with an elegant white light, in the last few months I’ve decorated my eaves with a variety of colors. These include shades of pink for Valentine’s Day, green and gold for St. Patrick’s Day, pretty pastels for Easter, red, white, and blue for Memorial Day, orange and purple for when my son got accepted to Clemson University, and then his school colors — orange and blue — for his graduation this month.
Second, there’s the benefit of connectivity; app control lets you set your lights on a schedule, set sunrise and sunset routines, and easily control them with voice commands. Paired with motion sensors, outdoor lights can be an excellent safety feature, illuminating a path as you walk along it or lighting up dark areas of your yard. I set up Govee’s outdoor lamppost in my backyard, and when I go out at night to check on the chickens, it lights up as I approach. This is where I’ve found outdoor lighting to be the biggest benefit in my yard, extending my garden’s usability past twilight.
Today, colored outdoor lighting still works best if you stick to one brand. That’s because many of the most impressive features — such as dynamic lighting — rely on proprietary apps. Dynamic lighting is the catch-all term for colorful, synchronized, and animated lighting effects. These effects can also sync with music, TVs, or computers to create a more immersive experience. Outdoors, music sync is the most useful, helping create an instant party atmosphere.
There are plenty of good outdoor lighting options with strong dynamic lighting features, including Nanoleaf, Philips Hue, Lifx, GE Cync, and Home Depot’s Hampton Bay, but for sheer variety and a broad price range, it’s hard to beat Govee. Its ecosystem has grown exponentially over the last few years, with entries in every category and some entirely new ones, and it’s significantly less expensive than Hue’s outdoor range.
Nearly all Govee’s newer products support the Matter interoperability standard, and all of them work with Alexa and Google Home for voice control and scheduling.