Things to consider before buying a Philips Hue Smart Light
If you own an Amazon Alexa device or any of the Google Assistant devices to create a smart home, you may already be looking into some smart lights to go with that!
You may even be thinking about buying some Philips Hue products such as smart bulbs, or maybe some lamps or smart switches. My first Philips Hue product was a lightstrip! I still have it, and I love it. But there are some things I wish I knew before buying it.
In this post, I’ll show you some of the pros and cons of using Philips Hue for your smart home.
What exactly are smart lights?
There is one main difference between a regular light bulb and a smart bulb: you can turn on and off your regular bulb with only a wall switch.
Smart bulbs can be turned on and off with a variety of smart switches, with a mobile app, with a voice command, or even with a synched schedule. Not just that, but you can also dim your smart bulbs and change their colors/tones.
Sounding pretty cool so far, right?
Choosing the right product - Bulbs
You can choose to simply change your current regular bulbs with Philips Hue Smart Bulbs. You can choose the size you need, or if they’re indoor or outdoor bulbs too!
When researching bulbs, something important to notice is that some are “white and color ambiance,” and some are just “white.” This small detail can be easy to miss at first, so make sure to choose the product you want. As you may have guessed, one bulb can change into different colors or tones, and the other one is just a white light (which can still be dimmed).
Both are still smart lights, and both offer a range of functions. Just the colors of the light can’t be personalized for the Hue White bulbs.
You can also choose some vintage bulbs, like this one:
Or some smaller “candle” bulbs, like these:
These are just the most common bulbs to give you an example of the variety of products that you can find. You can go to the product overview page and check out all the different lights they have to offer. The options are endless!
As you can see, you can buy just the bulbs, or you can also choose between different lamps or outdoor lightings.
My favorite is, by far, the lightstrips.
Lightstrips
Lightstrips have some adhesive on the back, so you can paste them wherever you want! Check out these COOL examples from the internet:
Behind your desk