Ikea’s smart bulbs are great and cost 75% less than Philips Hue
To say I recently had a light bulb moment while testing Ikea’s smart bulbs would be foolish, so I won’t. But it was revealing to hear that there are perfectly capable smart bulbs for 25% less than the cost of Philips Hue. Ikea may not be known for smart lighting, but maybe that needs to change.
Ikea delivers a solid quartet for smart lighting: affordability, local control, excellent remote controls and countless lighting products to create countless combinations. Even if you don’t end up choosing Ikea smart bulbs, they should be on your radar.
Ikea holds its own against other budget smart home brands
The simple design of the Ikea Home Smart app makes it easy to use.
My smart home philosophy has always been to buy cheap and reliable. There’s almost no point in buying a $200 smart light switch when you can get the same basic features for less than $30. The fancy software tricks of the more expensive model mean nothing if only a few people use them.
Ikea’s smart home offering meets these demands at prices that would make Philips Hue blush, especially for remotes and sensors:
Ikea Smart Lights vs. Philips Hue
| Remote control | Motion sensor | Contact sensor |
|---|---|---|
| Ikea Styrbar ($14) | Ikea Vallhorn ($9) | Ikea Parasol ($12) |
| Philips Hue Tap Switch Mini ($50) | Philips Hue Motion Sensor ($45) | Philips Hue Safe ($40) |
I won’t go into the many smart lighting products from either brand. But I note that Ikea has an edge on price, while Hue’s selection is larger. The smart hubs for Ikea ($70) and Philips Hue ($60) offer similar features, but the price difference isn’t nearly as pronounced. Ikea’s sensor prices are even better than most budget brands such as Aqara, Sonoff and Thirdreality.
Ikea excels in local smart home control
The Ikea Dirigera smart hub is a useful – but optional – part of an Ikea smart lighting system.
Ikea’s secret ingredient is that most smart lighting devices use the Zigbee smart home protocol, meaning they can work without a Wi-Fi connection. Zigbee also makes it possible to connect up to 10 smart bulbs to a single Ikea remote control (or sensor) without a hub. It’s perfect for beginners because you can always add a hub later for smart home controls like scheduling, remote access, and automation.
Local control also extends to Dirigera, Ikea’s smart hub. It plugs into your router and gives anyone registered with the Ikea Home Smart app on your Wi-Fi network access to the controls, even without an internet connection. It is also possible to set up remote access via the internet, but that is part of the course on a smart hub.
Ikea’s wall remote control is sleek and simple, in keeping with the brand’s minimalist Scandinavian aesthetic.
Ikea’s Zigbee connections also help extend the battery life of remote controls and sensors. Unlike a constant connection to Wi-Fi, Zigbee only communicates with a hub when sending and receiving commands. In other words, Zigbee devices basically remain on standby until they are needed. They won’t drain a battery slowly like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
The other advantage of Zigbee is smart home compatibility. This means that Ikea’s Zigbee devices work with most other smart hubs that support Zigbee: Amazon Echo, SmartThings, Philips Hue and so on.
My favorite smart home remotes
I’ve been using Ikea remotes in my smart home for years.
I use Ikea Tradfri remotes with my Samsung SmartThings smart hub, which controls various Zigbee and Wi-Fi devices. As a renter, I don’t want to get my property manager in trouble by replacing my wired light switches, so Ikea’s remotes are an ideal setup for my smart home.
Ikea remotes control my Sengled smart bulbs and Kasa smart plugs with frequent scenes and commands, so I don’t have to find my phone or ask a voice assistant. Plus, remotes are a good option to prevent guests from accidentally turning off my light switches – schedules and scenes don’t work when a smart bulb is off. I love magnetic mounting plates, which I strategically place over my light switches. (It’s not the most elegant solution, but at least it’s practical.)
That said, Ikea’s remotes aren’t perfect. The older Tradfri models in my smart home have terrible battery life due to the use of a small coin cell battery. Ikea seems to have learned from this by switching to larger AAA batteries in newer models such as the Rodret and Styrbar. AAAs are an excellent upgrade because you can find rechargeable versions and reduce e-waste.
The AAA batteries in Ikea’s newer remotes are a big improvement over button cell batteries.
Please note that my SmartThings hub does not support the dimming feature on Ikea remotes, and the newer remotes required some work behind the scenes. SmartThings forum get started. If you want a remote option with less programming, I recommend using the Dirigera hub.
Luckily, the Dirigera hub supports Amazon Alexa, Apple Home and Google Home – you can easily connect to these smart home setups. There is also beta support for Matter. I successfully linked Dirigera to SmartThings via Matter – all my connected Ikea lamps were ready to fit into the rest of my system.
You can connect Dirigera’s smart hub to other Matter-compatible systems such as SmartThings.
Numerous smart lighting variants
At the time of writing, Ikea sells more than 150 smart lighting options online. Most of these are smart lighting sets with various LED bulbs, fixtures, remote controls and accessories. Still, there are a surprising number of smart bulb options for it standard (E26), candlestick (E12) and track lighting (GU10) fixtures. Likewise, many of Ikea’s custom lighting fixtures, light panels and lighting strips can be connected to the Dirigera hub.
That said, there aren’t as many options for multi-color bulbs as Philips Hue and other competing brands. Ikea sells many models with adjustable color temperature, a feature I use again and again at home: soft white tones for relaxing and daylight tones while working.
Ikea’s smart lighting range includes various light strips, such as the Silverglans.
Ikea sells a number of other types of smart home devices in addition to smart lighting, but the one that stands out is its selection of motorized blinds. The biggest limitation with Ikea’s smart blinds is finding the right size for your window, so it’s harder for me to recommend them.
All in all, it’s worth considering smart lighting products from Ikea, especially if you’re on a budget. It’s not a perfect solution, but practical enough for most people.
