Best accessories with HomeKit Adaptive Lighting 2024
The best HomeKit light bulbs, light strips, and more with HomeKit Adaptive Lighting take the guesswork out of managing your home's lighting. In the morning, HomeKit Adaptive Lights utilize warmer tones to ease you into your day. In the afternoon, your lights will switch to cooler temperatures to keep you energized, and your lights will shift back to warm white at night to promote rest. If you are ready to experience the future of smart lighting, then here are our picks for the best HomeKit Adaptive Lighting accessories.
Full of features
The Nanoleaf Essential A19 Light Bulb puts the latest tech into the familiar medium base shape. Along with HomeKit Adaptive Lighting, Nanoleaf's bulb supports millions of colors, dimming, Thread, and a maximum brightness of 1,100 lumens. If all that wasn't enough, this bulb also happens to be the cheapest HomeKit Adaptive Lighting option on the market.
Goes anywhere
Perfect for the nightstand at home or on the go, the Philips Hue Go with HomeKit Adaptive Lighting features a rechargeable battery that lasts up to 18 hours on a single charge. While portable, the Hue Go still packs in the same colorful lighting as the rest of the Hue line, and with 520 lumens of bright light, it is an excellent alternative to traditional lamps.
Peel and stick
The Philips Hue Lightstrip Plus adds a touch of color — and Adaptive Lighting to almost any surface with a simple peel and stick installation. This 1,600 lumen, six-foot light strip can meet most needs by trimming down the excess length or with extensions if you need to cover larger areas — up to 32-feet!
Bright beauty
Eve's light strip takes HomeKit Adaptive Lighting to the extreme with the ability to produce up to 1,800 lumens of incredibly bright light indoors. The Eve Light Strip also features a unique triple-diode design that produces millions of colors and clean shades of white that outclass cheaper alternatives.
Desks and more
While marketed as a bias light for TVs and desk set up, the Philips Hue Play Bar makes for an excellent lamp with a slim, mountable design and HomeKit Adaptive Lighting. The Play Bar maxes out at 530 lumens, each with millions of colors, and if you do decide to put it behind your monitor or TV, its handy three-port power supply makes it a breeze to expand.
Recessed and Adaptive
The Philips Hue Smart Recessed Downlight brings HomeKit Adaptive Lighting to those hard to reach — yet essential areas. These recessed lights pack in long-lasting LED technology capable of hitting a maximum of 700 lumens and outputting up to 16 million colors. However, the best feature is the clean, uninterrupted design you get with having all of the lighting built-in to the fixture.
Thread too
Like most light strips, the Nanoleaf Essentials Lightstrip makes it easy to add a splash of color to any surface. However, what truly sets the Essentials Lightstrip apart is its insane brightness — 2,200 lumens peak, and Thread wireless connectivity. With Thread, you get ultra-fast response times and fantastic reliability if you have a HomePod mini in your home.
Bar-friendly
The Philips Hue Enchant bundles a beautiful, minimalistic pendant light with a Hue E12 color light bulb at a great price. Usually, $50 on its own, the E12 candle bulb inside produces 450 lumens of light, rich colors, and HomeKit Adaptive Lighting — so for just a few bucks more, you can upgrade the smarts and an outdated fixture at the same time.
Modern-looks
If the Enchant pendant isn't quite big enough for your needs, the Philips Hue Flourish may fit the bill with its sizeable 15-inch glass globe. The round design is an excellent match for dining areas, especially when you consider its room-filling 3,000 lumens of bright, colorful lighting and dimming capabilities.
Gold standard
The standard A19/E26 Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance light bulb is the gold standard for intelligent lighting thanks to its excellent color reproduction and 800 lumens of bright white light. The latest generation Hue color bulb features Bluetooth onboard so that you can use it right out of the box without the Hue Bridge, but if you want HomeKit Adaptive Lighting, you will need to pony up for one.
Long-lasting
Most modern kitchens and living areas rely on overhead recessed lighting, so if you want HomeKit Adaptive Lighting, you either need to go with a Philips Hue Downlight or these BR30 bulbs. Sure they are pricey, but since they are LED, they have a life expectancy of 22 years or 25,000 hours, so your wallet won't hurt again for a while.
Smart candles
The elusive E12 candelabra style light bulb — found in ceiling fans and chandeliers, is the final piece of the smart lighting puzzle for many, and it gets even tougher to find when it comes to HomeKit Adaptive Lighting. In fact, this is your only option currently, but since it is part of the Philips Hue line, you know you are getting a quality bulb with plenty of colors and 450 lumens each.
A new direction
This smart GU10 spotlight bulb from Philips Hue pairs well with HomeKit Adaptive Lighting, highlighting key areas — or decorative pieces, with customizable colors and color temperature. The Hue G10 bulb supports color temperature adjustments from 2000 to 6500K, and of course, the industry-standard 16 million colors.
Hues of color
Despite supporting HomeKit Adaptive Lighting, the show's true star with the Hue Play Gradient Lightstrip is its ability to produce multiple colors throughout its three available sizes — 55, 65, and 75-inches. Combined with media-syncing, multi-color capabilities make the Gradient a natural fit for the living room behind the TV. Still, during the day, you can take advantage of the gradual light shifts that you get with HomeKit.
Sleek design
The Philips Hue Signe truly makes a statement with its striking industrial design. Available in this floor lamp size or as a smaller table lamp, the Signe's ultra-slim diffuser gives off a beam-like effect that looks incredible in either color or various shades of white through HomeKit Adaptive Lighting.
Updated classic
One of the first color smart accent lamps available, the Philips Hue Bloom Table Lamp, is still alive and kicking with the latest features like HomeKit Adaptive Lighting. The newest model Hue Bloom now sports a maximum brightness of 500 lumens and supports Bluetooth pairing so that you can use it without the Hue Bridge. As always, though, you will need the bridge to gain HomeKit features.
Playful smarts
Another statement piece from Philips Hue — the Hue Iris Smart Lamp, has a directional design complete capped off by a clear base that illuminates with your choice of over 16 million colors and whites. The Iris reaches 570 lumens peak while sipping just eight watts of power, plenty for task lighting powered by HomeKit Adaptive Lighting during the day.
Automate every room in your home with HomeKit Adaptive Lighting
You can always trust iMore.
HomeKit Adaptive Lighting puts your home's lighting on autopilot by providing the perfect shade of white light, depending on the time of day. For example, your bedside lamp can wake you up to gentle soft white light in the morning, while your overhead office lighting helps you stay focused during the afternoon with bright daylight whites. All you need is the proper lighting and a single tap over in the Home app.
Are you just starting on your HomeKit journey and want an affordable HomeKit Adaptive Lightning-enabled light bulb? If so, Nanoleaf's light bulb is your best bet with dimming, 1,100 lumens of peak brightness, and tons of fun by allowing you to set a color for HomeKit lights in the Home app — all without the need for a dedicated hub.
If you are already deep into the Philips Hue ecosystem and want to replace those hard-to-find ceiling fan light bulbs, then the Philips Hue White & Color E12 LED Candle Light Bulb is the one for you. These candle-style light bulbs give your ceiling fan an instant upgrade to HomeKit Adaptive Lighting, and with support for millions of colors, you can set the mood on-demand anytime.
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Christopher spends most of his time writing and dreaming about all things HomeKit and the Home app. Whether it is installing smart light switches, testing the latest door locks, or automating his households daily routines, Christopher has done it all.