7 ways to keep your smart lighting simple and effective
Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible ¹
One year on from going all out on smart lighting, I thought I'd share a few ways I've set up my setup to step up my home experience whilst keeping all the simplicity of traditional lighting. I use the Philips Hue ecosystem. Others are available but from my research, none are anywhere near as reliable. The suggestions below are my own opinions and I welcome other perspectives.
1. Keep it Tactile
Have all the settings you need programmed into physical switches. You don't want to find, unlock and play with your phone just to see what you're doing in your own home. That way, everything is controlled with physical touch, as we have come to take for granted with traditional lighting. These switches don't need to be wired-in, so place them both at room entrances and also within an arms-length of anywhere where you typically sit or lie.
I take this suggestion one step further: don't activate voice control. That way, you'll never have to repeat yourself just to turn your lights off. Buttons always work first time, and if you have them conveniently located, you can turn them on faster than you can say "please kindly switch light 1, light 2 and lamp 9 to the Jack Robinson setting".
2. Remove Microdecisions
When you arrive home tired with bags of shopping in your hands, you shouldn't have to choose which combination of magenta and cyan is best for unloading them. Whenever you enter a room, that decision should be made for you. Have a default "On" button that turns on the lights in a way that's most appropriate for the time of day: bright in the morning, cosy in the evening, and subdued for moseying about the place before bed. This means lighting won't interupt your thoughts. Sometimes it will need to be tweaked or changed, but this system should get it right more often than traditional lighting.
Most evenings I used to turn on the big light so I could see and press the switches of the lamps around the room, before returning to the main light switch, turning it off again. Now it's all done with one switch, and any adjustments can be made with a tiny turn of a dial.
3. Guestproof
You aren't the only person that will need to control the lights in your home, so don't make guests guess or stress.
My switch dials have all kinds of functionality, but the top two buttons on every switch are always "On" and "Off". I've added stickers that label them as such. A guest won't know that pressing "On" sets a scene depending on the time of day, they might not even realise it's smart lighting, and they don't need to. Having said that, I tend to be quite quick at showing people all the bells and whistles of my lighting.
4. Wake with the Sun
Set an automation that slowly turns on your lights shortly before you need to get up. You'll wake naturally without a piercing alarm. Sleeping with the blinds open may also work.
5. Turn the Whole House Off
Put a button by the front door and by your bed that turns everything off. If you have more than one bedroom, have this only control the communal rooms.
6. Add Motion Sensors to Hallways
The only reason you're in the hallway is to get to another room so don't waste time, bill-money and microdecisions turning the lights on or off.
7. Start Small, Think Big
Start with one room, but you won't have a room in your house that doesn't benefit from smart lighting. Decide whether each light source is ambient, accent or task lighting², and convert all ambient and accent bulbs. Any screwed-in bulb can become a smart light and most of the lamps you already have yearn to be converted. Use your lighting to create a balanced, functional, and layered interior space. Yada Yada.
These bulbs are expensive. I live in a 2 bed flat and converting my entire space cost just over £1,000. But don't compare the cost to traditional bulb prices. Compare it to other home improvements you might be considering. For me, it was money well spent because it's something that benefits me everyday, even if I rarely notice it.