It's kind of addictive. Once you get them all installed and you're rocking the app or voice control through a home assistant, it's pretty cool. I tended to have my favorite lighting setups and just use those all the time. It does have a profound effect on your general demeanor when your lighting is pleasing.

But then, one day, something to do with having your lights respond to your world will pop into your head. For me, it was "I wonder if I can make the light at the front door blue if it's going to rain today". And then down the rabbit hole I went. I scrape a weather site at 8 am and if the chance of rain is more than 40%, it turns the front light blue, so I see it as I leave home for work and grab my umbrella. If it's not a weekday, it doesn't do it. At 9 am, the light goes back to its normal color and turns itself off.

You can do things like have the front porch light change to a distinctive color if you're having dinner delivered so the driver can pick out your house.

One of my favorites is "Alexa, movie time" and it fades all of the living room lights off except for the ones in the corners behind me. Those it fades to a dull red so you can see to move around without wrecking your night vision, just like a movie theater.

It's one of those things that you don't get until you start using it and then you realize how much lighting can... I don't want to say "improve" your life, but enhance maybe or enrich your life.

Oh! Alarm clocks? Thing of the past in my house. I'm not a heavy sleeper, so I have the bedroom lights slowly fade in over the course of 15 minutes, like a sunrise, and wake me up. It's far better than a jarring alarm.

Wake up to pee in the middle of the night? Bathroom lights are on motion sensors and the response of the light depends on the time of day. During the day, they're on full brightness with a blue color temp and turn themselves off after fifteen minutes of no motion so they don't put you in the dark while you're trying to just take a dump or you're in the shower where the sensor can't see you. In the evening, they run a more yellow color scheme and have a shorter on period. After 10 pm, they're extremely dim and reddish so if you wake up at 4 am to pee, you don't have to fumble for a light switch or get blinded when the lights come on.

This post was edited on 1/25/20 at 4:41 pm