You Don’t Have to Ditch the Switch When You Switch to Smart Lights

Published April 28, 2023

Jon Chase

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Smart-home confession: It can be tedious to have to consult a phone or smart speaker just so you can turn off smart lights (there, I said it). Personal confession: Some members of my household regularly trigger a smart-home meltdown by flipping off the switches that power all the smart lighting, rendering them, well, stupid. Alas, a smart house divided cannot stand.

I have found salvation via a simple solution. If you have hesitated to adopt smart lighting, or this particular technological scenario is already a plague upon your home, low-cost wireless smart switches can fix that and bring peace to all parties.

If you have bought an LED bulb only to discover it makes everyone in the room look seasick or makes once vibrant rooms seem yellow and dingy, you understand that lighting has a lot of psychological power. Smart bulbs allow you to harness that power by tuning the color temperature to whatever inspires you at any given time, from bright daylight to warm candlelight and from, in the case of color bulbs, millions of tints. The Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance A19 Starter Kit, one of our long-standing picks, makes wielding that power easy. Hesitation over using an app to control it shouldn’t keep you from reaping the rewards of smart lights.

Like lamps, in-ceiling fixtures and can-style ceiling lights are also easily upgradeable to smart lights. Philips makes smart ceiling fixtures that have the same benefits of the company’s bulbs but lay flat against a ceiling and connect to your existing wall switches. That makes them seamless in your home, but, as already noted, a potential source of conflict.

The Philips Hue White Ambiance 4″ Retrofit Recessed Downlight is a tunable white retrofit fixture that mimics the look of a curved PAR-style bulb and inserts easily into a 4-inch can-style ceiling light receptacle (it has flexible tabs that grab onto the receptacle to keep it secure). You set it up and control it using the Hue app (more on that below) and should have a Hue Hub on your Wi-Fi network in order for it to be automated and remotely controllable. You can tune the light quality from warm 2,200 K to blazing white 6,500 K.

The Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance Slim Downlight has a flat lens surface and can simply be inserted into a hole in your ceiling and connected to power without needing a can or junction box. It also works best with a Hue Hub and can be tuned to any of millions of colors or tones of white, from 2,000 K to 6,500 K. (For a deeper dive see our guide to the best smart LED bulbs, as well as the best smart outdoor lighting.)

A three-bulb kit that includes a Hue hub to enable grouping, automation and remote access, and a wireless switch to simplify control.

A thin, modern-style flat-lens light with white and color tuning. A pair of spring-loaded clips allow installation directly into a 6-inch ceiling hole.

May be out of stock

This white-only model looks like a standard bulb with a cowl, and inserts easily into existing recessed can lights.

Smart bulbs and fixtures are peculiar in that they are designed specifically to be installed in non-smart table lamps and ceiling fixtures controlled by traditional switches. The problem is that they require a tiny but constant trickle of electricity because they essentially have mini computers inside. By having that sip of electricity, the smart light is always available to receive a command to turn on or off or dim or change colors, whether those commands come from an app, a remote control, or voice commands to a smart speaker.

If, instead of using the app, someone instead flicks off a wall switch, those bulbs and fixtures are instantly drained of all their special features. Think of it like Superman after he gives up his superpowers.

For smart lights to work, you need to use smart controls.

A switch replacement for Hue lights has both a customizable on/off button and programmable scene button as well as a dimmer paddle.

Each of this switch’s three buttons is programmable to trigger three different settings, making it possible to trigger multiple devices as well as Scenes.

A smart wireless switch mounts to your wall and works a lot like a traditional wall switch—though with way more features—and enables you to turn a light on and off and adjust your lighting without fear of throwing a wrench in your smart-home utopia.

Several models and styles of wireless switches are available, though many of them are proprietary and only work with a specific lighting brand, so you have to get the switch that matches your system.

For Hue lighting, the Philips Hue Dimmer Switch is a clean-looking, flat remote switch that attaches magnetically to a custom wall plate (you can remove it from the wall to use like a portable remote). It has a large power button at the top, a dimmer rocker switch in the middle, and a Hue button at the bottom which can be programmed to trigger up to five lighting settings. For instance, you could program it so that if you press it once your lights come up at one brightness level and color temperature, a second press triggers another setting, and so on. Setting it up with bulbs and the Hue fixtures mentioned above was simple and worked predictably (once you figure out that you have to go into the Accessories part of the Hue app).

Hue is a reliable platform and is fully compatible with all the major smart control systems (Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple HomeKit, and Samsung SmartThings). The switch is attractive, and it doesn’t look gadgety. The only misgiving I have is that the remote and wall plate are noticeably larger than standard American wall plates, so if you have a bank of switches it can’t be integrated and instead has to be stuck to the wall beside them. Design-minded folk may bristle. When installed solo it looks much more normal.

The Wemo Stage Scene Controller with Thread is a three-button wireless remote switch that is standard size and so can be installed into a bank of paddle-style switches. Each of the buttons has three settings (single press, double press, long press), which you program using the Home app on iOS devices—the Stage Scene Controller is currently only compatible with Apple devices and HomeKit.

Notably, the Wemo Stage Scene Controller doesn’t require a hub, and because it supports a mesh wireless standard called Thread, its wireless range and speed can be boosted by other Thread devices—most smart speakers support Thread and some wireless routers do too. If you don’t have Thread devices, the Stage Scene Controller is limited to Bluetooth (which in our tests worked slowly and often failed).

Both switches worked well in our tests, with no noticeable lag time between pressing a button and having a light go on or off. You know, a lot like a regular wall switch.

The ability to press a physical button as needed and toggle between preset lighting temperatures and dimming levels is, frankly, a relief, and it has enabled our household to reengage on other topics. Like why our multiroom audio system never works.

This article was edited by Jon Chase and Grant Clauser.

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