Lighting is where most people start their smart home journey, and for good reason. It's visible, immediately useful, and surprisingly deep once you get into automations. This guide covers everything: which bulbs and protocols to pick, how to set them up in Home Assistant, and the automations that make your lights feel like magic.
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You flip light switches dozens of times a day. Automating them gives you an immediate, visible payoff. And unlike complex climate or security setups, lighting is forgiving. If an automation misfires, the worst that happens is a light turns on when it shouldn't. No damage, just a flicker.
Lights turning on when you walk into a room. Dimming at sunset. Off when everyone leaves. You feel the difference on day one.
Zigbee and Z-Wave lights work entirely on your local network. No internet outage will leave you in the dark.
An IKEA Tradfri bulb costs under 10 euros. A Zigbee coordinator is 20 to 30 euros. That's your whole starter kit for one room.
This decision shapes your entire lighting setup. Here's what actually matters in practice.
Best for: Most people. Start here unless you have a specific reason not to.
Best for: One or two lights, or if you flash with ESPHome/Tasmota for local control.
Best for: People with Wi-Fi congestion or existing Z-Wave devices.
Our recommendation: Go Zigbee. The ecosystem is massive, prices are low, and every bulb you add makes your network more reliable. Grab a Sonoff ZBDongle-P or SLZB-06 coordinator and pair it with Zigbee2MQTT in Home Assistant. Done. Read more in our starter kit guide.
We've tested dozens. These are the ones that actually work well, pair reliably, and don't cost a fortune.
Starting at around 8 euros, these Zigbee bulbs punch way above their price. Available in white spectrum (warm to cool) and full color. They pair instantly with Zigbee2MQTT and act as Zigbee routers, strengthening your mesh. The color rendering isn't as good as Hue, but for most rooms you won't notice.
Protocol: Zigbee | Price: 8 to 15 euros | Best for: Filling your house without emptying your wallet
The gold standard. Best color accuracy, fastest response time, widest color gamut. They work with the Hue Bridge or directly with your Zigbee coordinator. The Hue Bridge integration in Home Assistant is rock solid and gives you entertainment features like syncing lights to music or your screen. If budget isn't the main concern, Hue is hard to beat.
Protocol: Zigbee | Price: 30 to 55 euros | Best for: Living rooms, bedrooms, anywhere color quality matters
These come pre-flashed with ESPHome firmware, so they connect to Home Assistant over Wi-Fi without any cloud dependency. Perfect if you want Wi-Fi bulbs but refuse to use Tuya's servers. They show up in Home Assistant automatically via the ESPHome integration. Great for single spots where you don't want to set up Zigbee.
Protocol: Wi-Fi (ESPHome) | Price: 10 to 18 euros | Best for: Local Wi-Fi control without Zigbee
A solid middle ground between IKEA and Hue. Better color rendering than Tradfri, cheaper than Hue. Wide selection of form factors including GU10 spots, E14 candles, and E27 bulbs. They're Zigbee 3.0 compatible and work well with Zigbee2MQTT.
Protocol: Zigbee | Price: 15 to 25 euros | Best for: When IKEA isn't enough but Hue is too much
Sometimes replacing the switch makes more sense than replacing every bulb. Especially for rooms with multiple fixtures on one circuit.
Pro tip: You can use smart switches and smart bulbs together. Put a Shelly behind the physical switch and set it to "detached mode." The switch sends events to Home Assistant instead of cutting power, so your smart bulbs stay powered and responsive. Best of both worlds.
Once you've got the basics covered, LED strips are where things get creative. Under-cabinet lighting, TV backlighting, stair runners, shelf accents. WLED makes it stupid easy.
These are the automations people set up first, use every day, and never turn off. Start with these and expand from there.
The single most useful smart home automation. A motion sensor in the hallway, bathroom, or kitchen triggers the light. Add an illuminance condition so it only fires when it's actually dark. Set a timeout to turn off after 3 to 5 minutes of no motion. For bathrooms, use a longer timeout (15 minutes) so the light doesn't turn off mid-shower.
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.hallway_motion
to: "on"
condition:
- condition: numeric_state
entity_id: sensor.hallway_illuminance
below: 40
action:
- service: light.turn_on
target:
entity_id: light.hallway
data:
brightness_pct: 80
- wait_for_trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.hallway_motion
to: "off"
for: "00:03:00"
- service: light.turn_off
target:
entity_id: light.hallwayYour lights should follow the sun. Cool and bright during the day, warm and dim in the evening. The Adaptive Lighting integration in Home Assistant handles this automatically. Install it via HACS, assign your lights, and forget about it. Your sleep quality will thank you.
Install the Adaptive Lighting custom component via HACS. It adjusts color temperature and brightness throughout the day based on your location's sunrise and sunset times.
When someone arrives home and it's after sunset, turn on the entryway and living room lights at a warm, welcoming brightness. Use the person entity's state changing from "not_home" to "home" as the trigger. Pair it with a condition that checks if the sun is below the horizon. Simple, effective, makes you smile every time you walk in.
After 11 PM, motion sensors trigger lights at 10% brightness with warm color temperature. Perfect for midnight bathroom trips. You get enough light to see without blinding yourself or waking up fully. Use a time condition and set the brightness and color_temp in the action.
When the last person leaves, turn everything off. Use a zone trigger that fires when the number of people in the "home" zone drops to zero. Call the light.turn_off service targeting all lights. Add a 5-minute delay so it doesn't trigger if someone is just stepping out to the mailbox.
Here's the fastest path from zero to your first automated light.
Sonoff ZBDongle-P (~25 euros) is the go-to. Plug it into your Home Assistant device via USB.
Zigbee2MQTT is an add-on in the Home Assistant Add-on Store. Install it, point it to your dongle, done. ZHA works too if you prefer the built-in option.
Put the bulb in pairing mode (usually by toggling power 5 times), enable pairing in Zigbee2MQTT, and wait about 10 seconds. The bulb shows up in Home Assistant automatically.
Go to Settings → Automations → Create. Pick a trigger (sunset, motion, time), add an action (turn on light), save. That's it. You've automated your home.
Add a motion sensor. Try adaptive lighting. Put LED strips under your kitchen cabinets. The addiction is real.
For most people, IKEA Tradfri bulbs are the best value. They use Zigbee, cost around 8 to 12 euros, and work perfectly with Home Assistant via a Zigbee coordinator like the Sonoff ZBDongle-P. If you want color and high brightness, Philips Hue bulbs are excellent but cost more. Avoid cheap Wi-Fi bulbs that depend on cloud servers.
No. You can pair Hue bulbs directly with a Zigbee coordinator like ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT in Home Assistant. This removes the dependency on the Hue Bridge and cloud. However, keeping the Hue Bridge gives you the Hue entertainment features and acts as a Zigbee router.
Zigbee is better for smart lighting in almost every case. Zigbee bulbs act as signal repeaters, creating a mesh network that gets stronger the more devices you add. They use very little power, respond faster than Wi-Fi, and work without internet. Wi-Fi bulbs are simpler to set up but crowd your router and often depend on cloud services.
Yes. Home Assistant works great with LED strips. WLED is the most popular option. Flash an ESP32 controller with WLED firmware, connect your addressable LED strip, and Home Assistant discovers it automatically. You get per-pixel color control, effects, and full automation support.
Create an automation with a motion sensor as the trigger. When motion is detected, turn on the light. Add a condition for time of day or illuminance so lights only activate when it is actually dark. Use a wait_for_trigger with the motion sensor clearing, then turn off the light after a delay. This is the single most useful smart home automation.
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