The 4 Best Smart Outdoor Lights for Backyards of 2024 | Reviews by Wirecutter

Nov 07, 2024

By Megan Wollerton

We’ve updated this guide with all-new picks.

Maybe your yard feels a touch dark, a little drab, a bit boring. (Yeah, I said it.) If so, I’m happy to inform you that it has never been easier to give the outdoor areas around your home a quick glow-up, literally. Smart outdoor lighting is simple to install and set up, easy to customize, and available in a wide range of styles. You can add any one or several of these lights with little effort, and you’ll get a great effect.

These stylish, color-changing string lights support a host of fun scenes and settings but are surprisingly affordable.

These color-changing spotlights are straightforward to set up and use, and their heavy-duty, aluminum coating should hold up well to years of use.

This battery- and solar-powered path light doesn’t need a cord to operate, so you can install it anywhere you need a motion-activated pop of light.

This rope light offers a massive white-light color-temperature range and vibrant, saturated RGB colors, at a decent price.

For this guide we focused on four popular types of outdoor lights: string lights, spotlights, path lights, and rope lights. After testing lots of each, we found a few favorites to get you started on your own yard of dreams. And if you’re looking for great smart decorative lighting for inside your home, we have recommendations for that, too.

These stylish, color-changing string lights support a host of fun scenes and settings but are surprisingly affordable.

Compatibility: Amazon Alexa, Google Home

Who this is for: String lights are an excellent accompaniment to patios, porches, and any other outdoor areas in need of a little extra ambience. Use them year-round on a set schedule so your backyard glows while you grill, sit by the fire pit, or simply enjoy the view of your very own, customizable twinkle lights.

Most models are dimmable and offer adjustable white-light color temperature controls so you can set just the right mood for the occasion. Some models, such as our pick, add color-changing to the mix so you can create festive color combinations for the holidays and other gatherings.

Why it’s a pick: The Govee RGBIC Outdoor String Lights offer more lights than the competition, for less money. Available in 48- and 96-foot strands, these smart lights are a great choice if you have a lot of ground to cover. They also feature a traditional bulb shape if you prefer the classic string-light style. The Govee app offers customizable white-light color temperature, color-changing capabilities, and a range of themes and Scenes, along with more sophisticated settings. Those advanced features and options may be overwhelming for some people, but you can ignore them and still get satisfying results with the entry-level functions.

Another good option: The LIFX Outdoor String Lights, with a modern, cylindrical shape, offer a fresh take on string lights. The app is nicely organized and easy to use, from the initial setup to the highly varied selection of adjustable white-light and color-changing options. You’ll also find an assortment of light presets ranging from holiday and sports-team colors to nature-inspired Scenes. Compared with the Govee lights, these LIFX lights are expensive, but each of the 12 lights in this 24-foot strand has three different zones, so you can create lots of nuance with color, even within the same bulb. These string lights work with Amazon Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings.

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These color-changing spotlights are straightforward to set up and use, and their heavy-duty, aluminum coating should hold up well to years of use.

Compatibility: Amazon Alexa, Google Home

Who this is for: Spotlights project focused beams of light on your home or around your yard to add a dash of flair to landscaping. You can leave them up year-round, and then during holidays or other festivities use the app to select more colorful and dramatic colors and modes. They can also be set to illuminate dark areas around your property as a low-level security measure.

Spotlights are often sold in multipacks, which makes it easier for you to cover more ground, literally. They typically come with adjustable white-light and color-changing functionality, so you can create pretty much any mood to suit the moment. Smart features such as scheduling and Scenes among others make it easy to automate when and to what color and level of brightness your lights turn on.

Why it’s a pick: The Atomi Smart WiFi LED Spot Lights are durable, premium-quality 400-lumen lights with adjustable white-light and color-changing features, as well as support for Amazon Alexa and Google Home. They work just as well serving as subtle landscaping accent lights in white light as they do set to colorful, festive preset Scenes. The well-designed Atomi Smart app makes it simple for you to adjust and find settings, without getting lost. You can adjust the color temperature of the white light, dim the lights, or change them from white to color yourself—or you can simply select a Scene, put your lights on a timer, or create a daily schedule. These lights are expensive, but they also feel substantial enough to last through many seasons. We plan to test these spotlights over the long term to see just how well they handle the elements over time.

Another good option: The Govee Outdoor Spot Lights offer a lot of the same functionality—and a brighter, 500-lumen output per light—as the Atomi Smart lights, for less money. The Govee app gives you adjustable white-light color temperature, the full color wheel of RGB options, and tons of features and settings to explore. Because there are so many options, the app can seem confusing or just overdone at times. (Is anyone looking for a preset color gradient called “Anger”?) But these lights are easy to set up, they work well, and it’s no problem to set schedules, sync the lights to music, and much more. These Govee lights don’t have the same luxury finish or heft as our top pick, but they’re still a really good choice at a lower price.

This battery- and solar-powered path light doesn’t need a cord to operate, so you can install it anywhere you need a motion-activated pop of light.

Compatibility: Amazon Alexa

Who this is for: Path lights add a polished look to a walkway and can improve safety on uneven or poorly lit pavement. Some path lights are equipped with motion sensors that turn the light on when it’s dark out and someone approaches them. Smart models also send an alert to your phone when the sensors detect activity, letting you know that someone (or something) is there. You can also adjust the sensitivity of the sensors to limit your motion alerts to bigger things, such as people, rather than, say, the neighbor’s cat. Other models rely on power cords to operate, which allows them to run continuously if you’d rather schedule your lights to turn on and off at set times.

Why it’s a pick: The Ring Solar Pathlight has a battery- and solar-powered design, so you don’t have to bother with hiding extension cords and cables in your yard. It’s easy to set up, and the app is straightforward and simple to navigate. A group of these lights gave my front yard a polished, professionally landscaped look. When one light detected motion activity at night, the three other grouped lights also turned on for 30 seconds before turning off again.

If the area where you want to install these lights doesn’t get much direct sunlight, and if it sees a lot of regular motion activity, which is liable to drain the battery faster, this path light might not be the best option for you. This light also functions more as a security light, since it doesn’t stay on continuously or change colors.

Another good option: The Govee Outdoor Pathway Lights are a solid choice for anyone wanting a continuous stream of color-changing light. This set of plug-in lights comes with a cord that you have to integrate into your landscaping so it isn’t an eyesore (and so you don’t run over it with a mower, for example), but this also means you won’t have to worry about a battery running out. The Govee app’s vast array of options allows you to display pretty much any color combination you want, even alternating colors or custom segments of light. The app is overloaded with options, which may be off-putting to some—at least so you won’t run out of features to try.

This rope light offers a massive white-light color-temperature range and vibrant, saturated RGB colors, at a decent price.

Compatibility: Amazon Alexa, Apple Home, Google Home, Matter, Samsung SmartThings

Who this is for: Smart rope lights are ruggedized versions of their indoor cousins, strip lights. Instead of flexible tape, these thick weatherproof tubes house a string of color-changing LEDs. Beyond their white-light and color-shifting abilities, rope lights are versatile due to their flexible design, which you can form into pretty much any shape you want. You might attach one under a porch railing to give your home a bold accent of color. Or install one around the patio to better define it from the rest of your yard. Curve it around the base of a tree for a fun, festive holiday accent. Line your steps to provide better visibility.

Why it’s a pick: The LIFX Outdoor Neon Flex is a powerful rope light with an impressive white-light color temperature range of 1,500 K to 9,000 K—that’s basically dim candlelight up to beaming stadium-like bright white. At 100% brightness, it emitted more light than the other model we tested. The colors were also deeply saturated and intense, so this model is a great option for anyone craving bold color. (Fortunately, its dimming capability works well too, if you want to tone it down a bit.) The LIFX app is well designed and pleasant to use, allowing for easy control of lighting devices individually or grouped by room. And because the Flex rope light supports the wireless standard Matter over Wi-Fi, it works with all of the major smart-home platforms.

Another good option: The Philips Hue Lightstrip Outdoor offers a lot of the same features as the LIFX rope light, but its colors weren’t quite as bold in our tests, and its white-light color temperature has a slimmer range, from 2,000 K to 6,500 K. Hue lights also require the use of a Philips Hue Bridge, which makes them a pricier purchase. But the Hue Bridge uses Zigbee wireless, which has a far greater range than Wi-Fi, so this rope light may be a better option for anyone who has weak wireless connectivity outside.

This article was edited by Jon Chase and Grant Clauser.

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Megan Wollerton

Megan Wollerton is a product tester and an award-winning feature writer. Previously she spent a decade at CNET reviewing all manner of gear and writing long stories about nature. Before that, she blogged for NBC's Syfy Channel. When she isn’t overusing the em dash, Megan is either spending time outside or tracking down the best desserts in a 100-mile radius.

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