Get the smart home lighting experience you want with Amazon Alexa Lights
What is Alexa?
Alexa is the name of Amazon’s virtual assistant, just like how Siri is synonymous with Apple devices. This virtual assistant is built into Amazon smart home devices, like the Echo Dot, Echo Show, and more and is a great way to control Amazon Alexa lights.
Alexa can perform a lot of different tasks, including setting alarms and timers, playing your favorite song, answering questions (“Alexa, how many teaspoons are in one cup?”), telling you how long it will take to drive to work and even re-ordering all of your basics on Amazon.
And while Alexa enabled devices have a wide range of capabilities, when coupled with add-on Alexa skills, Alexa has the ability to do so much more — including completely customizing your smart home experience with Alexa smart home lighting.
Why you should consider Amazon Alexa lights
There are a lot of great uses for Amazon Alexa enabled lights, aside from just turning them on and off using voice commands.
Smart lights can be paired with alarms or timers. If you’re cooking and have a timer set to countdown, you can have your lights blink as the timer reaches zero. If you create a morning routine, you can have your lights turn on as your alarm goes off. And at bedtime, you can set lights to automatically turn off, which makes it a pinch to keep your kids on a routine so even a babysitter can keep your kids on schedule!
If you’re planning on being away from home, you can schedule a few “random” routines to turn your lights on and off to make it seem like someone is at home.
Like most smart home devices, you can create groups of devices, so if you have a few lights in your kitchen, you can group them together and say “Alexa, turn on kitchen lights.” But you can also control them individually, for example: “Alexa, turn on reading lamp.”
And yes, Philips Hue lights with Alexa can be just plain fun. Hosting a dinner party? Say “Alexa, turn kitchen lights to purple.” Crank up the music and let the fun begin!
How to set up Amazon Alexa lights
There are a few options when it comes to getting Amazon Alexa-enabled lights, but my favorite are Philips Hue.
The Philips Hue bluetooth smart light bulbs are the easiest to set up. That’s because they connect directly to Alexa via Bluetooth — which means that no smart hub is required. These brand new Bluetooth bulbs can be set up with any Echo speaker (or smart display like the Echo Show)!
You have 3 options for buying these new smart Bluetooth light bulbs with the easy set-up:
- The most basic (and cheapest) white light option
- The mid-range option with different shades of white light (also works better in dimmable light fixtures)
- The super cool multi-colored ones
Once you’ve decided on which Amazon Alexa light bulbs to use, it’s time to get them set up. Here’s how:
- Go to the Devices tab in your Alexa app (lower right corner of the bottom navigation bar)
- Tap/click the + in the upper right corner of the Devices tab
- Tap “Add Device”
- Select “Light” (under the All Devices section)
- Tap “Philips Hue” when prompted for the brand
- Tap the “Discover Devices” button
- You will see an “Alexa is discovering devices…” screen for up to 45 seconds
- Alexa will discover your new Hue lights!
VoiceBrew: Get more out of your Alexa Device with tips delivered straight to your inbox
VoiceBrew was created to help people get more out of their Amazon Alexa devices. Whether you’re just setting up your first Alexa device, or are a seasoned pro looking for advanced tips, VoiceBrew can help.
I love Alexa but realized that most people weren’t familiar with all of the capabilities available in every device! With VoiceBrew, you’ll have access to comprehensive how-to guides that cover basic set-up all the way to more advanced routines.
Wondering what devices work with Alexa? I cover that, too in VoiceBrew’s Alexa smart home guides. Ready to get started? Sign up for the VoiceBrew newsletter today.