3 Easy Ways to Use Alexa and Smart Lights to Enhance Your Home

At its best, Alexa streamlines the process of getting things done—from the everyday to the esoteric. And that’s especially true for home lighting: Using voice commands to dim your living room lights for TV watching or to turn on the kitchen and hallway lights for your morning routine turns out to be a far better experience than relying on your smartphone every time.

Using the Alexa app you can assemble devices into Groups that you can control together, and also create Routines—little personalized domino chains that trigger a few or several smart devices. Groups and Routines are easy to set up, and they can make your life a lot more convenient, uncluttering your brain by automating otherwise tedious tasks. And although they work with nearly any combination of smart devices, smart lighting in particular is one of the easiest and most effective uses.

To get started you need only an Alexa speaker such as an Echo or Dot, and a couple of compatible smart bulbs, wall switches, or plug-in switches.

I have a home office, so I set up a Routine to help me mentally separate when it’s time to work and when I’m off-duty. When it comes time to start my Wirecutter day, all I have to do is say “Alexa, go to work,” and the smart lighting around my home switches to my Office preset, Alexa reads through my calendar and to-do list for the day, and my preferred music playlist starts up. And just like that, I’m ready to begin the day!

Without my Routine to automate this process, I’d need to flip a light switch and adjust its dimmer; open my computer and click open the calendar, scroll down to the right day, and read; click over to my to-do list app, scroll, and read; and then open up Spotify, select my music, and start playing. And I haven’t even gotten to opening Slack or my email yet. With Alexa, it all happens in an instant, so I can focus on getting to my first sip of coffee.

Although voice commands are a central part of the Alexa experience, they’re not the only way to control your smart home. For example, you can create a multistep Routine that activates at a certain time of day or based on your location (via smartphone), such as every time you leave the house or come home. By connecting Alexa with a smart-home sensor or an Echo Button, you can also trigger a Routine every time you open a certain door or window, or at the tap of a button on your desk.

Alexa also gives you the option to create Groups of smart devices that can all activate from a single trigger—that Group could cover something specific like your kitchen lights, or something general like all of your lights. Some companies, such as Kasa, allow you to program Scenes made up of multiple devices, which you can also control through Alexa voice commands as well as by scheduling. One nice touch: Alexa Groups let you combine devices from several different companies, so you don’t have to open up multiple apps or use a string of triggers just to get the mood right in the den.

Whether you already have a smart lighting setup in your home or you’re interested in adding one, here are a few simple ways that Alexa can help.

1. Set a mood

My family’s den is a multifunctional space, and smart lighting is a great way for us to tweak the atmosphere to make the room more comfortable for a variety of situations. In our home, we use a combination of smart plugs and smart bulbs to create Scenes, which are preconfigured settings for different activities. When we’re just hanging around or watching TV, I can say “Alexa, turn on Den” for a basic, well-lit atmosphere using a Group made up of a dimmable TP-Link Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Light Bulb in the chandelier plus two lamps, each hooked up to a Wemo Mini.

For movie night, I can say “Alexa, it’s movie time,” and the room switches automatically to a Scene that triggers the same dimmable TP-Link Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Light Bulb in the chandelier. By turning this into a Scene—instead of just telling Alexa to turn that one specific light on—we can preset the brightness so it illuminates the room just enough for us to see the remote and to avoid walking into walls on our way to the bathroom.

When we’re having people over, we have a Party Time Routine that queues up my default party playlist on the Alexa speaker in the adjacent kitchen and then turns on three small lamps hooked up to Wemo Mini plugs and a TP-Link Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Light Bulb in the front porch light. This gives the main room of the house a nice restaurant-like vibe and illuminates the front steps so our guests don’t trip in the dark.

2. Make your home hands-free

Wall-mounted light switches aren’t always conveniently located, particularly if your hands are full. Our house has the laundry and storage in the basement, so instead of fumbling for the switch while holding a pile of dirty skivvies at the top of a perilous stairway, all I have to do is say “Alexa, Cellar Door” to trigger a TP-Link Smart Wi-Fi Light Switch HS200, which makes my life easier and has greatly reduced the frequency of my tumbling down the stairs.

Voice commands are also a remedy for rooms with a quirky (read: inconvenient) layout. If you have a lamp tucked in the far corner of the room, for example, you can use a voice command to light the room before you enter without needing to use your phone or having to bumble through the dark and tempting fate. Voice commands can also trigger Routines and Groups.

For my music studio, which is in a part of the basement with no overhead lighting or three-prong outlets, I use a combination of Wemo Mini plugs and extension cords, along with a Routine I call Let’s Rock. It turns the lights and power on (giving my amps a chance to warm up before I walk down the stairs) and sets my phone to Do Not Disturb so I don’t have to worry about a phone call interrupting my recording session. I’ve also added a timer and a location-tracking trigger into the WeMo app so that everything powers down automatically at 11 p.m. or whenever I leave the house (just in case I forget to turn off my toys).

3. Brighten up your yard

Although most people use voice commands to interact with Alexa, you can also set up Routines that trigger automatically. We’re the kind of household that likes to string up Christmas lights all year long to illuminate the patio. But instead of plugging and unplugging them every night, we’ve set up a Backyard Group using a TP-Link Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Outdoor Plug that turns on automatically 15 minutes before sunset and turns off again at 11 p.m.

If we want to trigger the lights earlier in the day, we can use our “Alexa, go outside” Routine, which powers up the Kasa plug and also queues up our favorite summer playlist on the nearest speaker. The Kasa outdoor plug also has a second outlet that we can control separately from the one with the Christmas lights—so if I want some extra juice for my laptop when I’m working outside in the middle of the day, for instance, all I have to do is say, “Alexa, turn on The Other Plug Outside.” Admittedly, it’s not the most brilliant naming convention, but it’s easy to remember.

We rely on similar smart lighting for security and safety, too. Our Front Light Group turns on automatically just before sunset, illuminating the walkway with a TP-Link Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Light Bulb outside and a lamp hooked up to a Wemo Mini just inside the door. Within each app, I’ve programmed these lights to shut off automatically at 1 a.m. or when the system senses both of our phones within our house and recognizes that we’re home.