Alexa Light Control – How To Control Lighting With Alexa

Smart Table Lamp by Lepro

The Smart Table Lamp from Lepro features 16 million color options with adjustable color temperatures between 2700K – 5700K. You can choose a bright white light for the morning time and a soft white light for later in the day for instance. Maybe you’d like a little blue mood lighting in the evenings?

While it is compatible with Alexa, you can choose to control the lighting with the Lepro app or the physical buttons as well. You can also pre-program lighting scenarios depending on the activities such as “wake up,” “bedtime” or “movie time.”

Philips Hue Smart Bulbs

Again, another Philips Hue product. Hue is the industry leader in smart bulbs and their products are very cool. This brand gives you a plethora of options to choose from thanks to their over 50 smart bulbs. They also have several features and can be customized to suit your lifestyle and different activities. For instance, you can sync Philips Hue lights to your music for epic parties.

LIFX Smart Bulbs

LIFX offers a range of perfect smart bulbs for both indoors and outdoors. Like other smart bulbs in this article, they’re compatible with Alexa and you can turn them on or off using your voice.

Unlike the Philips Hue, there is no extra Hub needed. You can also use Alexa to control and tweak your bulb’s light temperature and color. LIFX boasts 16 million color choices.

GE CYNC Smart Bulbs

General Electric offers a couple of smart LED bulbs that are compatible with Alexa. They’ve improved their functionality with newer models over the past few years, making them a good option.

This pack includes 4 bulbs that can operate using either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Color options are in the millions with each bulb offering up to 800 lumens.

Kasa by TP-Link

Kasa has become my go-to smart lighting brand for Alexa. They work well, I like the app, and they’re really easy to set up. They also don’t reset themselves all the time like some other bulbs I’ve used.

If you’re looking to set up a network of smart lighting throughout your house, it’s EXTREMELY helpful to be able to use the same brand for all of them. Mainly, because you can keep them organized under one app.

Kasa has a wide variety of products to fit most situations, making this pretty easy. They have smart bulbs, smart led strips, smart switches, smart plugs, etc. Each of these categories has several options as well.

TP-Link is also a well-established company, meaning I don’t anticipate them disappearing any time soon. So you won’t have to worry about losing app support or not being able to replace your bulbs when the time comes.

With all that in mind, you’ll notice our next two product recommendations are also made by Kasa.

Alexa Enabled Smart Sockets

So, here is a great and affordable workaround for plugin lamps. You can grab a few Smart Sockets that are Alexa-compatible. It’s like an adapter – all you have to do is plug the Smart Socket into the wall or surge protector, plug your lamp into the Smart Socket and you’ll be up and running in no time.

Smart Light Switches For Alexa

This is a little more difficult than your other options. It’s worth it in my opinion, but you might not want to go this route if you don’t own your own home.

Here it’s worth mentioning that if you’re using a smart light bulb, smart bulb adapter, or smart wall socket and the physical switch is off, then Alexa can’t turn it on. So for instance, you would need to keep your wall switch on at all times and then you can tell Alexa to turn it on or off.

With a smart switch in the wall, however, you can physically turn it off if you like and still turn it back on by voice command. You can also control multiple bulbs with one switch if they are on the same circuit.

While installation may be intimidating, as long as you know how to turn the breaker off, it’s usually a piece of cake for a single pole switch. Make sure to seek out the help of a professional electrician if there is any question as to your understanding of safety around AC power.

Note: Make sure you have a Neutral wire ran to where your current light switch is. If not you’ll need to grab a smart switch that doesn’t require a neutral (there aren’t currently that many). Also, if you’re hooking up a 3-way switch, your switch will need to support that.

For more information, on hooking up a smart switch without a neutral wire check out this article here.

How to Set up Your Alexa-Enabled Lights

Step 1: Open the Alexa app on your smartphone

Step 2: Select the (+) plus icon on the Devices section and click “Add Device”.

Step 3: Add Smart Light

Choose the appropriate option whether you purchased a new smart bulb, socket or smart wall switch, etc. Then choose the brand of device you purchased. Choose “Other“ if you don’t see your brand on the list.

Step 4: Follow the on-screen instructions for your particular device.

Each device or brand will have a slightly different process after step 3. If there are any problems you can find a YouTube video on the setup 9 times out of 10.

How to Have Alexa Turn off Multiple Lights

What if you have 2 lights in your living room? Or better yet, what if you have a ceiling light that holds 3 smart bulbs? Do you want to ask Alexa to turn on one bulb at a time? Yeah, me neither!

Have no fear, there is a solution to that. You can use Alexa to control multiple lights if they’re grouped and named accordingly during the setup process. For instance, you could have a group that’s named “Living Room Lights”. Then you would assign each of those bulbs to that group. So, now you can say “Alexa, turn on the living room lights.” and they will all come on.

If you set up Context-Aware Groups (explained below) then you can just say “Turn on the lights” when you’re in the living room and it will associate the Alexa Device in that room with those particular lights.

Here is how to set up Groups in the Alexa App:

1. Open the Alexa app and go to devices
2. Tap the Plus (+) icon at the top right
3. Select add groups
4. Pick the pre-defined names or customize the names for the group as you desire
5. Click the devices that you want to add in the group
6. Click save

Setting up Context-Aware Lighting

If you’re going to set up lights in multiple rooms and you have multiple Alexa device, this should be one of the first steps. Controlling the lights with your voice through Alexa can be very convenient and a bit of a novelty. On the other hand, it can be quite frustrating for you if everything isn’t properly named or configured.

Context-aware lighting plays a crucial role in the sense that it makes the process a lot easier. For instance, if you’re in the kitchen and says “Alexa, turn on the lights”, the lights should be switched on automatically. This generally makes it simpler for everyone including your loved ones and guests as they do not have to specify which light you want to turn on. In essence, context-aware lighting allows everyone to control several lights with one simple voice command.

Here is some more in-depth material on Context-Aware Grouping.

Alexa Light Commands

Now that you’ve set up your Alexa Light Control, it’s much easier to control every part of your home’s light through your voice commands. But wait a minute, do you know how to turn Alexa lights on or off or even dim them?

Well, it’s very simple. You can turn on the lights, put them off or dim them by giving out the simplest commands. The device mentioned in you commands just need to correspond with your device or group name.

To turn on a light, just say; “Alexa, turn (name of light or group of lights)”

If you’ve incorporated smart lights, switches or dimmers that support light dimming or changing of colors, just say:

·“Alexa, dim the bedroom”

·“Alexa, make the bathroom light green”

·“Alexa, make the living room light brighter” and so forth and so on.

Turning lights on and off on a Schedule

If you’d like to take your home automation one step further, you can set up a routine. An Alexa Routine will allow you to turn devices or groups of devices on or off when a particular action occurs.

This action could be a voice command, a time of day, or even your location for example. So you could, for example, set your living room lamp to come on at 10 pm even when you aren’t home to deter intruders.

The best part about these routines is that you can create as many as you want. You can also use these routines to control a group of lights or individual lights.

Here’s how to create an Alexa Routine:

1. Click the menu tab at the top left corner of your Alexa App.
2. Select the + symbol in the top right-hand corner.
3. Select the + symbol next to “When this happens”.
4. Select your event to trigger the action. In this example, we’re using the Schedule function.

5. Select “At Time”

6. Choose the time you would like your lights to come on.

7. Select the days you’d like it to repeat.

8. Click Next.

9. Choose the + sign next to “Add action”.

10. Press “Smart Home”

11. Choose “Control device” if you’re only using one light or “Control group” if you’d like to use multiple lights in your routine.

12. Select your light or group from the list.

13. Choose whether you’ll be turning the light on or off at this time.

14. Click “Next” and then save your setting.

Of course, you’ll need to follow the same process to turn the light off at a certain time also.