Smart lighting is one of the most popular considerations for new smart home setups since it's extremely useful and a great smart device for beginners. So instead of wading through countless off-brands, take a look at these excellent smart lighting manufacturers, with offers ranging from high-end lamps and permanent fixtures to straightforward smart bulbs. And you won't have to worry about smart ecosystem compatibility, either, as most of the best options support Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, with a select few already certified to work with the Matter standard.

The best smart lighting ecosystem for your home in 2023

Nanoleaf's most noteworthy products are the ones making up its Shapes family. They're geometric, modular installations you can use to add the perfect flair to a bedroom, home theater, or gaming room. But there's more to Nanoleaf than just the flashy stuff. In addition to drop-in ceiling downlight retrofitting and novel ceiling floodlighting developments, it also makes a few smart bulbs, and they offer the most refined experience of almost any brand.

In particular, the recently updated Matter A19 bulb does a great job of showcasing why we love Nanoleaf. It turns on and responds to commands in milliseconds, which is an underrated part of smart lighting performance. It's also the first smart bulb to support the up-and-coming Matter ecosystem. While you might not need Matter compatibility just yet, it's the kind of forward-thinking premium feature that reassures you how well-designed Nanoleaf products are.

Few things in the tech industry are as widely accepted as Philips Hue offering the best smart lighting on the market. It's as streamlined to configure and use on a day-to-day basis as anybody could ask for. It's responsive, highly customizable, and as reliable as they get. There's also an impressively wide selection of Hue lights, including super-classy Gradient floor lamps and wall sconces, and Philips was one of the first to release a 1,000-lumen bulb.

So what's the catch? It's simple: Hue lights are really expensive. If you're just starting out and aren't sure how much you'll really get out of smart lighting, you'll understandably balk at the upfront cost. But if you decide to take the plunge, we're confident you'll be happy with it, because Hue lights are fantastic.

You'd normally see TP-Link Kasa heading up our roundup of best smart plugs, but its lighting is great, too. Similar to its smart plugs, switches, and power strips, Kasa's smart bulbs aren't exactly mind-blowing in terms of features and complexity. Instead, they're honest, dependable, easily customizable bulbs that are shaped almost identically to incandescents, so they'll drop into any of your existing lamps or fixtures.

It's also worth noting that we've given Kasa smart bulbs a positive review here in the past, and a recent update makes them an even better prospect. This time around, their peak brightness got bumped up from 800 to 1,000 lumens, and they're now engineered to save even more electricity when in standby mode.

Govee is quite unlike the other smart lighting companies. Rather than just floor lamps and simple light bulbs, it focuses heavily on entertainment-friendly accent lighting. To give you an idea of what we're talking about, we've highlighted the Flow Pro light bar set. It includes a camera and microphone for operating the lights dynamically, changing colors to fit the beat of the music or the onscreen action of a movie or game.

They offer a handful of bundles for specific uses, such as light strips that go on the back of a 55- to 65-inch television to increase apparent contrast. There are even a couple of Sync Boxes, one of which operates the dynamic reactive lighting with such low latency that it takes fast-paced gaming to the next level.

Ring's another one that's a far cry away from a simple light bulb manufacturer. As you might expect, Ring smart lighting should be paired with a Ring Video Doorbell and compatible security products. With that in mind, Ring lighting is very much for home security, not for design or ambiance.

The first clue might have been the large, outdoor-focused floodlight we've drawn your attention to here. But there are more to choose from, and each enhances the value of your Ring security setup. Take note, however, that none of them are any more useful than a non-smart motion-detecting light unless you pick up a Ring Bridge, 4th-gen Amazon Echo, or 3rd-gen Echo Show.

One of the frustrating things about smart home technology is that devices don't always play nice together, especially if you pick and choose from a wide range of brands. Meross takes away some of that hassle with explicit support for not just Alexa and Google Home control but also Apple HomeKit and Samsung Smartthings. The company has also expressed a commitment to developing Matter-compatible smart plugs, and then likely more Matter stuff, once the new protocol starts to take off a little more.

For evidence of why LIFX lighting is great, check out the concise but well-balanced lineup of great LIFX bulbs. It was one of the first companies with a 1,100-lumen A19 bulb, and it's since developed a good selection of form factors useful for a variety of different applications. We especially like the E12 Candle Color bulb, which turns the smallest bedside lamps into smart lights. We also love the relatively recent Beam light bar, which adds dynamic, programmable light to any wall.

There's not much to Wyze smart lighting. Like the rest of its smart products, it's meant to be straightforward, dependable, and easily used by anybody. It fills those roles well. It comes in two main versions: a newer, 1,100-lumen color bulb that's pretty affordable, and an older, 800-lumen version that's especially affordable. And despite their simplicity and low cost, they're great at responding to schedules, geofencing, and custom scenes.

Picking the right smart lighting for your needs

Nanoleaf made its name with fancy, wall-mounted geometric arrangements marketed largely to gamers. Since then, it's expanded its Shapes lineup significantly while developing the first Matter-friendly bulbs available. While there aren't a ton of bulbs to choose from, what's there performs more quickly and smoothly than anything else. However, if you're trying to save money above all else, you'll also be happy with our budget pick from TP-Link Kasa.