Bright night

While some other smart lighting brands stick sensibly to the inside of your home, and others (like LIFX) make only slight excursions to the outdoors, Philips Hue has really cemented its outdoor expansion recently with a wide range of new outdoor bulbs and illuminators. Philips runs its own low voltage system to the garden, which allows you to daisychain together certain products for easy installation. And new devices like the (rumored, at press time) Hue Wave Linear (which feels an awful lot like an outdoor version of the Hue Play Bar) can sensibly take advantage of it.

Note that you’ll often find the Bluetooth option missing from Hue’s outdoor bulbs, which does make sense; while it’s a neat addition to its newer indoor hardware, you’re not likely to want to wander all over your garden turning things on and off when a simple Zigbee message passed along the line of lights would do the trick. So make sure you have a bridge.

You don’t have to light up your garden like a clown’s dream. But you can.