Home LivingGardenHow to introduce smart lighting to your gardenIlluminate your flowerbeds and cast pools of light onto the patio with these connected, voice-controlled lightsWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Home LivingGardenHow to introduce smart lighting to your gardenIlluminate your flowerbeds and cast pools of light onto the patio with these connected, voice-controlled lightsWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Illuminate your flowerbeds and cast pools of light onto the patio with these connected, voice-controlled lights
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Philips Hue)
(Image credit: Philips Hue)
With the sun shining and temperature soaring, it looks like June was the perfect pick for T3’sGarden Tech Month. We’ve already looked atessential garden gadgets,smart soil monitorsandconnected weather stations, and now it’s time to turn our attention to outdoor lighting.
Naturally, this being T3, we’re looking specifically at smart outdoor lighting. Smart lighting has been available inside the home for years now, letting you pick from thousands of colours and adjust the brightness and temperature of every bulb and light strip with a smartphone app, voice control or even automation.
But what about the garden? Although the market for weatherproof outdoor lighting is smaller for now, there are still plenty of great ways to illuminate the outside of your home. From wall-mounted spotlights and down-lights, to lights that can be planted into the soil, there are plenty of options for illuminating every aspect of your garden, path, patio or driveway.
(Image credit: Signify)
(Image credit: Signify)
Before you get started
Like any garden project, installing smart lighting requires some preparation. Almost all garden lighting systems (and especially phone app-connected smart ones) need access to power and Wi-Fi.
This will likely mean the installation of outdoor power sockets, if you don’t already have some, or a weatherproof way of running power cables from sockets in your home or an outbuilding like a garden shed or summer house. You’ll need a plan for concealing power cables, whether that be simply burying them in the soil, or taking a completely bespoke approach with walls and decking designed from the outset to house powered lighting.
Next, the lights are going to need a data connection. Some connect directly to your Wi-Fi network, while others connect wirelessly to their own hub first, which is then connected to your router with an Ethernet cable. For the former, you’ll need to make sure every garden light is close enough to the router to function properly. This might mean relocating the router closer to the garden, or investing in aWi-Fi network extenderfor boosting signal strength outdoors.
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Lastly, think about how your garden lighting system might be expanded at a later date. Have you enough plug sockets available to do that? Can your decking be modified to house more lighting, or different models of light at a later date? These aren’t the sort of device that gets updates annually, but factoring in some flexibility to your build, and room for future expansion or modification, is a good idea.
Although solar-powered garden lighting is available – and some options appear in our roundup of thebest outdoor lighting for 2023– these are not smart and cannot be controlled with a phone app.
(Image credit: Innr)
(Image credit: Innr)
Installation and automation
At this stage, you should consider what smart home tech you already have, if any, and which automation system you want your garden lights to work with. Do you already useAlexato control lights in the home? Or perhaps you have everything running throughApple’s Home app on aniPad.
Most smart lighting systems work with bothAmazonAlexa andGoogleAssistant, so it should be relatively straight-forward to integrate new lighting into your existing voice-controlled smart home systems. Fewer lights work with Apple’s HomeKit, however, so it’s worth doing your homework first if you want Siri-controlled garden illumination.
It’s also worth thinking about automation. Optional motion sensors can have garden lighting switch on automatically, both as a convenience feature but also as a form of security and burglar deterrent.
(Image credit: Twinkly)
(Image credit: Twinkly)
Which smart lighting to buy
As we have already alluded to,Philips Hueis a fantastic choice for garden and outdoor lighting. The company offers a broad range of weatherproof lighting options for mounting almost anywhere, from walls and decking to among the flowerbeds.Hue lightingisn’t cheap though, with most options costing between £100 and £180 per light.
Lastly, for smart fairy lights, there’sTwinkly. This company offers a range of smart, multi-coloured bulbs daisy-chained together and controllable with Alexa and Google Assistant. They can also be synchronised with music and have an IP44 rating for weather resistance. A string of 20 bulbs costs £130, or 40 bulbs is £230.
Above all else, make sure the lighting you buy is designed to be used outside. IP certification helps make this easy, and lighting with a certification of IP44 is splash proof, with the first number referring to dust resistance and the second referring to water resistance. Lights with a certification of IP65 are protected against all dust (or soil) and water jets, so will be safe to use almost anywhere in the garden.
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Today’s best Smart Lighting deals$5.94View$29.99$11.99View$20.19$12.77ViewShow More DealsWe check over 250 million products every day for the best prices
Today’s best Smart Lighting deals
$5.94View$29.99$11.99View$20.19$12.77View
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TOPICSPhilips Hue
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