Essentials

These smart holiday lights will enhance your Christmas home decorating

Edited By Lily Rose

October 30, 2023 / 3:44 PM EDT / Essentials

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Here's a bright idea -- it's time to work smarter, not harder on your holiday lights this year. Smart LED lighting not only allows you to create festive lighting you can control, but it can also save you money on your electric bill.

We've found top-rated, customer-loved smart holiday lights that can be used to showcase the colors and lighting effects you want on your Christmas tree, Christmas wreath, outdoor holiday decor and more. Plus, most of our smart light picks can be controlled using your smartphone. How genius is that?

Christmas home decorating ideas using smart lights

Transform your entire home into a holiday wonderland that your family, friends and neighbors will love. Let's take a look at amazing smart lighting options that make decorating your home for the holidays super simple.

Philips Hue Christmas Festavia 65' string lights

Even Santa would approve of decorating your Christmas tree, as well as the inside and outside of your home, using Philips Hue Festavia 65-foot smart string lights.

Each string includes 250 individual mini smart LEDs that are app controlled and can work in conjunction with all other Philips Hue smart lighting products that use a Philips Hue Bridge (sold separately or as part of a smart lighting kit).

The Festavia string lights are also available in a 130-foot length that includes 500 individual mini lights ($360). Both sets can be set up to sync with your favorite holiday music.

$220 at Amazon

A smart Christmas tree: Mr. Christmas Vermont Spruce

One of the best decisions you can make this holiday season is to adopt smart lighting in all aspects of your Christmas decorating, starting with the Christmas tree. The Mr. Christmas Vermont Spruce is seven feet tall with a 48-inch diameter. It comes with 400 mini-LED smart lights built into the artificial tree, allowing for quick and stress-free setup. The lights can be voice-controlled via Alexa, enabling you to instantly change the lighting color or lighting mode

In addition to all white or multi-colored lights, you can opt to have all of the lights display just red, green, blue, light blue, yellow or purple. Lighting modes include steady, sparkle, firefly, flip and fade. You're also able to create a schedule for the lights to turn on and off, or switch between colors and scenes automatically.

$383 at Amazon

A flexible and customizable decorative light string: Govee Christmas lights

For your indoor or outdoor holiday light decorating, the Govee Christmas lights are an affordable alternative to string lights. However, these offer just as many customization options.

This 66-foot-long string light set includes 200 mini-LEDS that are fully programmable. Because it's IP65 rated, this light strip can be used indoors or outdoors. The flexible string can be wrapped around a tree, staircase, fence or pillar. It can also be hung around the edge of a ceiling, around a doorframe, or on any wall. Use your creativity to discover unique ways of using these bright and colorful smart lights throughout your home.

Once set up, the Govee Christmas lights can be programmed to display your choice of 16 million colors, using a variety of pre-programming lighting effects. The lights can even sync with whatever music is playing. There are 99 pre-set lighting scenes to choose from. You have full control over these lights (and all other Govee smart lighting products) using Alexa voice commands or the easy-to-use Govee mobile app (for iOS and Android-based devices).

$90 at Amazon

App-controlled Christmas string lights: Twinkly Strings

If you're looking for more traditional holiday string lights, but want to control them using a smartphone app, we suggest these Twinkly Strings smart lights. The 65.5-foot string includes 250 mini-LEDs, each of which can display more than 16 million colors, so you can decorate your home with beautiful light and color.

Using the Twinkly mobile app, it's easy to control one strand of string lights or multiple strands at the same time. This means all of the lighting can sync perfectly within each room or area of your home. Using the app, you're also able to create a schedule to turn the lights on and off, have the lighting change colors or patterns at predetermined times, have the lights sync with the music that's playing, or instantly switch to a light color and pattern that you want. The lights also accept voice commands. Because they're waterproof, you can set them up indoors or outdoors.

While it's possible to set up multiple 65.5-foot Twinkly Strings lights to work together, there's also a cluster version of the lights that includes 400 mini-LEDS on a 19.5-foot strand. This variation allows you to create different visual effects using a larger number of smaller LED lights (within a smaller space) that can also display over 16 million colors.

$97 at Amazon

Permanent outdoor smart lights: Govee permanent outdoor lights

Offering yet another way to decorate the outdoor areas of your home, Govee offers its permanent outdoor lights package. Throughout the year, these lights can brighten a porch, terrace, or front door area of your home with bright decorative white lights. During the holiday season, these same lights can transform your outdoor space with holiday colors and animated light sequences.

These smart lights come in 100-foot strands that contain 72 LED eaves lights that are waterproof and controllable using the same Govee mobile app that works with all of the company's smart lighting products. The lighting set also responds to voice commands via Alexa or Google Assistant.

Each of the lights can alternate between 16 million user-selectable color options and together showcase any of the 75 pre-programmed scenes that are accessible via the app. Each light has a maximum brightness of 26 lumens. Since these lights are designed to be attached permanently to the outside of your home, special VHB glue and clips are provided.

$300 at Amazon

Holiday wreaths with integrated smart lighting: Twinkly pre-lit wreath

Using the same mobile app that controls other smart lighting products from Twinkly, you're able to control the 50 mini-LED lights that come pre-wired within this artificial holiday wreath that has a two foot diameter.

The smart lights within the wreath can display more than 16 million colors in a variety of customizable or pre-created lighting patterns. The app is available for iOS and Android mobile devices.

The wreath's lighting responds to voice commands via Alexa or Google Assistant. To coordinate perfectly with this wreath, your Christmas tree and other holiday decor, Twinkly also offers a nine-foot, pre-lit garland ($115). It utilizes 50 fully controllable smart mini-LEDs and works with the same app.

$93 at Amazon

Decorative smart lighting you can use all year long: Nanoleaf Shapes

Nanoleaf offers a variety of decorative smart lighting products. Most come in a collection of flat tiles that get hung on a wall in whatever pattern you choose. This LED lighting kit includes nine hexagon-shaped tiles that are app-controlled. Each tile can display more than 16 million colors. Using the Nanoleaf app, you're easily able to choose from hundreds of pre-created animated light patterns, have the lights sync with music, or display whatever color(s) and patterns you want.

Throughout the year, Nanoleaf Shapes can add decorative ambience to any room, but during the holidays, the lights can mimic the Christmas lights strung throughout your home or on your tree.

If nine hexagon-shaped titles isn't enough, expansion kits with hexagonal and different size triangle-shaped titles are sold separately. What we love about these smart light products is that you can mix and match the Nanoleaf tiles and create whatever pattern you desire on your walls. Then you can choose the colors and animated light patterns that are displayed at any given time. Each tile sticks to the wall using removable mounting tape that's supplied.

$220 at Amazon

Use regular light fixtures to display holiday lighting: Philips Hue A19 LED smart bulb starter kit

One of the great things about the Philips Hue home smart lighting ecosystem is that there are literally dozens of options to choose from, including stand-alone light fixtures with color-changing smart bulbs built into them, smart light strips, decorative lights and replacements for recessed ceiling lights.

The expansive Hue product line also includes standard A19 LED light bulbs that can replace the traditional light bulbs within your existing light fixtures. Doing this transforms those light fixtures into smart lights within minutes.

To take advantage of the Philips Hue smart lights, you need to either purchase a Hue Hub (that's sold separately) or acquire the necessary hub as part of a Hue Starter Kit.

We recommend the Philips Hue A19 LED smart bulb starter kit because it includes the required hub, along with four standard size (A19) light bulbs that can be used within any of your existing light fixtures. Once this starter kit is set up, you can easily add any additional Hue smart lighting products (including more A19 bulbs, which are sold separately) to your home and control them all using the same Hue mobile app.

Each A19 smart bulb can display many shades of white, as well as more than 16 million colors. And in addition to selecting the colors, you're also able to set each bulb's brightness. The lights can be controlled one at a time, in groups within a single room, or you can use the app to control all Hue lights at once. Using a few on-screen taps or voice commands, it's possible to create customized lighting scenes or choose from thousands of pre-created animated scenes –- including many that are holiday-specific.

$160 at Amazon

Upgrade your artificial Christmas tree: Fraser Hill Farm 12-foot flocked Christmas tree with smart lights

This holiday season, make things easier on yourself with two simple moves. First, swap out the real tree for a super-realistic artificial Christmas tree - no more fussing with the live ones. Second, bring some smart lighting magic to your tree to make it the ultimate holiday showstopper.

Meet the Fraser Hill Farm 12-foot flocked Christmas tree with built-in smart LED lights. It's a breeze to set up, and it stands at 12 feet tall with a 76-inch diameter. If that's too big for your space, don't worry - Fraser Hill Farm offers similar artificial trees in 6.5', 7.5', or 9' heights.

This tree has 5,483 lifelike, flocked tips that give it the charm of a traditional cut tree. It's designed to last for years and dazzle you every holiday season. Plus, it comes with a bunch of cool lighting options to suit your mood.

$750 at Amazon