How to Choose Light Bulbs for Your Smart Home

One of the benefits of replacing traditional light bulbs with smart bulbs is the ability to change their color to what suits you in the moment. Instead of having to buy one light bulb temperature when you’re at the store, you can use an app on your smartphone to adjust the hue and intensity of the lightbulbs in your smart home.

A light bulb’s color temperature is measured in Kelvins (K), and the number indicates how warm or cool the light will be. A lower Kelvin number means the light will appear more yellow or orange, while a higher Kelvin number means the light will be bluer. For example, a 2700K bulb will be warm and yellow, while a 6000K bulb will have a cold blue quality.

But what does that mean in terms of actual colors that you might want to use in your home? If you want a bright white light for spaces like kitchens and workshop areas, choose a lightbulb setting of 5000K that gives you plenty of illumination for working on tasks. When you’re reading, you might even want to jump up to a setting between 5000K and 6500K. This temperature resembles natural daylight from the noonday sun and helps reduce strain on the eyes when focusing on the pages of a book.

For relaxing spots in your home, such as your living room, den or bedroom, a light temperature of 2700 to 3000K produces a cozy, soft white. Alternatively, it can be nice to have a warmer temperature of 4000K in kitchens or bathrooms, but it all depends on the effect you’re seeking.

Lumens measure how much light a bulb emits. If you grew up with old-school incandescent bulbs, you might still correlate a bulb’s brightness with wattage. But wattage is a measurement of energy usage, not the amount of light output. In fact, a 7-9 watt LED can now produce the same amount of light as a 60-watt incandescent bulb, which highlights just how much energy you can save by switching to smart lighting that uses LED bulbs.

For lamps in dining rooms and living rooms, 500-800 lumens is a nice range that provides plenty of lighting for relaxing or watching TV. You can also go even further down to create mood lighting. In bedrooms, you could go dimmer for bedside table lamps, but you’ll want at least 450 lumens for reading. Meanwhile, it’s nice to have anything from 1000 to 1600 lumens for overhead kitchen lights.

The beam angle determines how wide a space the light covers. This matters only for spotlights (also called directional lights), not for bulbs that cast their light evenly in all directions. Spotlights can be used for overhead lighting, accent lighting and security lighting. A wider beam angle means that the light will cover a larger area, while a narrower beam angle means that the light will be focused in a smaller area.

120 degrees is a good option for basic overhead lighting. For hallways, you could go down to 90 degrees. When it comes to highlighting artwork and other decorative lighting needs, the requirements of will be determined by the size of the area you want to illuminate and the distance of the light source from that spot. To help get the perfect beam angle, some sites online provide calculators through which you can plug in diameter and distance to work out your best option.

Dimmable light bulbs are ideal for creating different moods within the same space. It’s also easier than ever to dim the lights with simple a command on your phone? to your smart lighting kit.

However, not all LED bulbs are created equal when it comes to dimming. If you want to be able to dim your lights, look for bulbs designed for that purpose. Otherwise, you’ll end up getting bulbs that can’t be dimmed and trying to adjust them this way will harm the bulbs and shorten their lifespan. You will also need compatible lighting fixtures if you want to use certain kinds of dimming bulbs, such as 3-way bulbs that offer three levels of brightness.

When buying lightbulbs, it’s easy to get wrapped up in all the details about lumens, Kelvins and dimming and forget what the actual socket requires. Remember not to overlook the specifications of your table and floor lamps and other lighting fixtures when replacing their light bulbs. The wattage requirement should be visible near the fixture’s bulb socket.

Whether you’re replacing can lighting with LED bulbs or swapping out incandescent lights with smart bulbs, it can be helpful to take the light bulb you are replacing to the store with you so you can get the right one or have it on hand when placing an online order for replacement light bulbs.