Not only are the best smart LED light bulbs more energy-efficient than traditional incandescent bulbs, but you'll feel like Tony Stark walking through your home, controlling the lighting with just your voice. Google Home is one of the tentpole home assistant platforms and all of the bulbs listed here pair perfectly with all of the best Google Home compatible devices available. All you need to ask yourself as a consumer is how many bulbs you need for your home and how much are you willing to spend?
Full-feature smart lights
To experience the best that smart LED lights can offer, you'll want to start with ones that are entirely customizable with the full spectrum of colors available. Because these bulbs are way more expensive than any light bulb you've probably bought in your life, you're going to want to choose a brand that can satisfy all your smart lighting needs or piece together your house plan with bulbs that don't need a hub.
Light your home with color
Philips Hue Color Smart Bulb Starter Kit (3-pack w/ Hub)
Staff Pick
Philips is the leading manufacturer of wireless LED smart bulbs for many good reasons. Philips Hue bulbs are easy to set up and are the most consistent quality bulbs on the market. A good starting point is the three-pack of the 3rd-generation multicolor bulbs. This pack comes with a Philips Hue Bridge that will connect the bulbs to your home's network, but these bulbs also support local Bluetooth connections. You'll only need one Hue bridge to control all your Hue bridges, so once you've got the starter kit, you won't need another.
$156 at Amazon $140 at Best Buy
The other Philips bulb
Philips WiZ Connected Color Bulbs (2-pack)
I love Philips Hue bulbs, but they can be prohibitive. They're super expensive. Philips's other brand, WiZ Connected, was acquired by parent company Signify and is designed to be completely separate from the Hue ecosystem. These bulbs don't require a hub at all and, instead, connect directly to your home's Wi-Fi network. They're also perfect for pairing with any smart home service, not just Google Home, and maintain the quality you expect from the Philips brand without the expected price.
No hub required
LIFX Wi-Fi Smart LED mini-bulb (4-pack)
LiFX newest bulbs are much smaller than the older models, sporting the mini-bulb moniker and emitting 800 lumens of brightness. Each bulb can customize your spaces with 16 million colors and 1,000 shades of warm to cool whites. No additional hardware is required to get things set up with Google Assistant as each bulb connects directly to your Wi-Fi network.
Budget bulbs that require a hub
Sengled Element Classic Smart LED bulbs (2-pack w/Hub)
These have been on clearance at Best Buy for some time, so there's no telling how long they'll be available. Sengled offers the best value for budget-conscious consumers looking to invest in smart bulbs — but you're still going to need a dedicated hub (which comes in this pack). The good news is that once you have that hub, you're able to add up to 64 bulbs to your network, and Sengled has the best prices for buying bulbs in bulk.
Smart bulbs from China
Yeelight Smart LED Bulb (4-pack)
Xiaomi is a massive Chinese brand that offers smart bulbs through the Yeelight brand that don't require a hub to work with Google Home. These multicolor bulbs provide 800 lumens of brightness and can be synced to music or set in sync with your morning alarms. If you've already got a bunch of products from Xiaomi's Mi Home smart home line, this might be your best choice.
Geek chic lighting
Nanoleaf Rhythm Edition Smarter Kit
Do the Nanoleaf light panels fit the description of a smart bulb? That's up for debate, but no doubt, these are the coolest smart lighting kit you can control with Google Assistant. This kit includes the Rhythm Module and nine panels so you can mount a customized light fixture on the wall of any room in your home that will dance along with pulsing color to the ambiance of the room.
LED magic
Govee 16ft WiFi LED Strip Lights
These 16ft LED light strips are amazingly cheap and easy to install anywhere in your home. Each strip includes a dedicated on/off switch that also lets you change colors without your phone or smart speaker, but you'll use the Govee Home app. There's lots of customization available, and you can link your Govee account to Google Home to control it all with your voice.
A dynamic change
Govee Immersion LED Strip Lights
Designed for 55-inch and 65-inch TVs, the Govee Immersion LED Strip Lights can dynamically change the color and brightness of each LED on the strip based on what's happening on your TV. It does this with a little camera that sits either above or below your TV, which works with any content on your TV. Integration with Google Home means you can make routines that change your lighting to set the mood for movie watching or game playing, and you won't even need a hub to connect to your home's Wi-Fi, either.
Beautify your porch
Philips Hue Econic
If you're already planning on investing in a Philips Hue system — or already have — Philips Hue Econic is a phenomenal way to add smart lighting to your front porch without much fuss or cost. This attractive light fixture sports a built-in LED array that ties directly into the Philips Hue hub and lets you run all the same routines and connections that Philips Hue supports. Econic supports any color you can think of, so holiday decorating becomes way easier, and a standard dimmable white range of colors can be chosen for any other time of the year.
A modern approach to lighting
ET2 IQ
Like the Philips Hue Econic fixture above, ET2 IQ features a built-in LED array that allows ET2 to design a fixture that would otherwise be impossible with standard lightbulbs. ET2 IQ is part of the Friends of Hue program, meaning it connects directly to your Philips Hue hub and can be used with Google Home and any routines you might want to incorporate it in. This one is style and substance.
Dimmable white smart bulbs
Let's be real. Not every smart bulb in your home needs to cycle through 16 million different colors. They just need to be dimmable and react to your voice commands. So you can save some money buying white LED smart bulbs for the more mundane areas of your house like hallways and bathrooms and save the fancier color bulbs for the areas you entertain your guests. There are dimmable white smart bulbs available for each smart hub ecosystem and many options that only require a Wi-Fi connection.
Ease into the Hue ecosystem
Philips Hue White Smart Bulb Starter Kit 4-Pack
As long as you already own a Philips Hue Bridge, you can start adding smart bulbs to any room in your house. With this four-pack of dimmable white bulbs, you're able to schedule and automate your lighting to fit your daily needs or make it appear that your home is lived-in while you're out by scheduling lights in different rooms to turn on and off throughout the evening.
Effective and efficient
Philips WiZ Connected Dimmable White Bulbs (3-pack)
Philips WiZ Connected is the other brand from Philips parent company, Signify, and works just as well with Google Home as you would expect the Philips Hue line to. The big difference here is that these bulbs tie directly into your home's Wi-Fi network instead of using a hub as Hue does. That means setup is more straightforward, and you don't have a single point of failure. Not only that, but the cost of entry is much, much lower. A win, win, win, really.
Buy 'em in bulk
Sengled Element Classic Smart LED bulbs (8-pack)
If you've already got a Sengled hub — or even a SmartThings or Wink hub — you can add eight bulbs to your network for the best price per bulb that you will find. That's a heck of a deal and a great option if you desire to replace every bulb in your home with a voice-controlled smart bulb without spending hundreds of dollars.
For that retro Edison look
Kasa Vintage Edison Style LED Bulb
These fancy Kasa Edison bulbs go for the retro look of an Edison bulb with all the convenience of a connected smart bulb. These are standard A19 bulbs controllable through your phone or Google Assistant and are easy to dim and set on scheduled timers. They connect directly to Wi-Fi and don't need a hub of any kind, making it easy to pick up a few without worrying about it not working with other types of bulbs.
Best Wi-Fi bulbs on a budget
Kasa Smart LED Bulbs
For those of you who are okay with standard white, dimmable smart bulbs and don't want to spend a fortune, Kasa Smart bulbs are a good pick that offers the added benefit of no hub — just a reliable connection to your home's Wi-Fi network is required. Each bulb is priced affordably and makes it easy to pick up lots without breaking the bank.
Don't be afraid to mix and match
The best part about having so many smart light bulbs available that all work with the Google Assistant is that you can have a hub set up and some individual Wi-Fi bulbs all running on your home network and still control everything using just your voice.
Our top recommendation is the Philips Hue Starter kit which gets you all you need to build your dream smart home. Hue certainly costs more than other brands, but the Philips Hue app and all its integrations make it simply smarter than other options. These bulbs tie in perfectly with Google Home, and you can use Google Assistant to control every aspect of your lights, including powerful zone controls. The Philips Hue hub uses an ultra-reliable Zigbee wireless connection, different wireless technology from Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. That means your bulbs will work properly even if your home Internet connection is out.
But just because you have some Hue bulbs doesn't mean you can't mix and match brands to your heart's content. Google Assistant works with every brand on here, including the ability to change colors, dim the bulbs, and add them to routines. Bulbs like Philips WiZ Connected are way cheaper than Hue without sacrificing much in the way of features, while accent pieces like the Nanoleaf Rhythm Smarter Kit add an extra flair to your home that simply can't be achieved by any normal-style lightbulb.
If you're going for a more retro look, there's no denying the timeless style of Kasa Vintage Edison style bulbs. These bulbs have those unique Edison-style filaments inside, but don't generate heat or use tons of electricity like those bulbs used to. Additionally, since these are Kasa branded, that means they connect directly to your home's Wi-Fi network and are controllable via the Kasa app, Google Assistant, or Amazon Alexa. So it's the best of both worlds.
Source: androidcentral