Smart lighting

Light up your life with these exceedingly bright bulbs

Smart lighting has become one of the most popular additions to the home. That’s because a change in lighting can make a big difference to the look and feel of any room. Smart lighting schedules make your routine easier, and the right light can chill you out at night then wake you up with a gentle, cheery light in the morning. There are a host of security benefits to smart lighting, too.

Perhaps the best bit about smart lighting is that some systems only need a single bulb to started. LIFX (from £14.99, uk.lifx.com) is one of our favourite brands for a fuss-free set-up, enabling you to add smart bulbs to your home and control them all via one app.

These clever bulbs give you access to more than 16 million colours, with Day and Dusk features enabling you to set schedules so that the colour and brightness of your lights changes through the day, mimicking natural sunrises and sunsets – this is great news for your circadian rhythm, which in turn has a positive impact on your sleep. If you know you want to add smart lighting to your entire home, Philips Hue (from £59.99, meethue.com) is our top recommendation. Begin with a Hue Starter Kit and build from there, adding connected atmospheric lamps, spotlights, bulbs and strip lighting to every corner of your home. As well as setting schedules to turn on and off the lights according to your routine, each light can also connect to other smart products, adding an extra level of safety and convenience to your day.

Philips also has Hue Play, a lighting bar that syncs up with music, films and games to amp your home entertainment experience.