Weekend Tech: The Best Smart Lighting Systems for Your Home

July 26, 2025 Tyler Brooks 0 Comments 4 min read

Upgrading your home’s lighting is one of the easiest and most impactful ways to transform the look and feel of your space. Smart lighting goes far beyond just screwing in a new bulb. It gives you the power to change the color, brightness, and mood of any room with a simple voice command or a tap on your phone.

Whether you want to create the perfect cozy atmosphere for a movie night, a bright, focused environment for working from home, or just have your lights turn on automatically when you arrive, a smart lighting system can do it all.

The market has matured significantly, and with the new “Matter” standard making everything work together, it’s easier than ever to get started. Here are our top picks for the best smart lighting systems to upgrade your home this weekend.

What to Look For Before You Buy

Ecosystem and Connectivity: How do the bulbs talk to each other and to your phone? Some use Wi-Fi, while others use a more robust mesh network like Zigbee or Thread, which requires a small hub or bridge.
Colors and Brightness: Do you want simple, dimmable white bulbs, or do you want bulbs that can produce millions of different colors? Check the maximum brightness, measured in lumens, to ensure they are bright enough for your space.
The “Matter” Logo: This is the new universal smart home standard. If a bulb has the Matter logo, it guarantees that it will work with any major smart home platform (Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa). Prioritizing Matter-certified products will make your life much simpler.

Our Top Picks for 2025

1. The Best Overall Ecosystem: Philips Hue

Best For: Anyone who wants the most reliable, feature-rich, and expansive smart lighting system on the market.

Philips Hue is the undisputed king of smart lighting for a reason. Their system is built around the Hue Bridge, a small hub that creates an incredibly fast and stable Zigbee mesh network for your lights. This makes them more reliable than Wi-Fi-only bulbs. The quality of the light itself is second to none, with rich, vibrant colors and a wide range of brightness. Their ecosystem is massive, including standard bulbs, lightstrips, outdoor lights, and creative lamps. The Hue app is powerful and polished, and its “Sync” feature, which can match your lights to the content on your TV or your Spotify music, is a fantastic party trick. It’s the most expensive option, but it’s a premium, “it just works” experience.

2. The Best for Creative Designs: Nanoleaf

Best For: Gamers, streamers, and anyone who wants to treat their lighting as a piece of wall art.

Nanoleaf has carved out a unique niche with its modular, wall-mounted light panels. Available in various shapes like triangles, hexagons, and lines, these panels connect to create any design you can imagine. They are famous in the gaming and streaming community for creating a dynamic, futuristic backdrop. Nanoleaf’s products are also at the forefront of new technology, with strong support for both Thread and the new Matter standard. If you want your lighting to be a creative statement piece, Nanoleaf is the clear choice.

3. The Best Budget Option: Wyze Bulb Color

Best For: Anyone looking to get into smart lighting without a major investment.

Wyze has built its brand on offering surprisingly good smart home gadgets at rock-bottom prices, and their smart bulbs are no exception. The Wyze Bulb Color connects directly to your Wi-Fi, so no hub is required. For a very low price, you get a bright, color-changing bulb that can be controlled via the Wyze app or with voice commands through Alexa and Google Assistant. While it lacks the massive ecosystem and flawless reliability of Philips Hue, it is an incredible value and the perfect, low-risk way to try out smart lighting in a room or two.

4. The Simplest Setup: WiZ Smart Lighting

Best For: Renters or those who want simple, hub-free lighting for a single room.

Owned by the same company as Philips Hue, WiZ offers a simpler, Wi-Fi-based alternative. Like Wyze, their bulbs connect directly to your router, so the setup is incredibly easy. Their app is user-friendly and includes some fun, dynamic light scenes. While they aren’t as feature-rich as their Hue cousins, WiZ bulbs are reliable, affordable, and one of the easiest ways to add a splash of smart color to a dorm room, an apartment, or a kid’s bedroom.