5 Of The Best Smart Lights For Your Home Office

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Smart lights aren't just for enthusiast gaming rigs or flashy effects — they can also be great for home office setups. Integrating smart bulbs or a smart lamp into your home office gives you the ability to control cool or warm lighting for different projects and times of day, lighting that adapts to your schedule with built-in timers, and in many cases, a way to control your lights hands-free via voice commands — which is a big help if you have your hands full, literally and metaphorically.

They don't have to be expensive, either. The XTREME Energizer Smart Wi-Fi LED Light Bulb kit comes in at just $13.98 for two customizable smart bulbs. But if you're looking for something with premium features and impressive illumination, like the Govee Glide Hexa Light Panels, we've got you covered there, too. Plus, most of our recommendations are RGB-enabled, which is a fun ambient addition if you like to kick back with some movies, music, or video games after work. You can also get creative with your smart lights, using them for visual reminders or syncing them to music for added flair.

The Philips Hue Go Portable Accent Light ($109.99 at Best Buy) is one of the best options for home office smart lighting if you're looking for a small source of direct light. It's not the best choice to brighten up your entire office, but if you want to shine more light on the spreadsheet in front of you, or you want people to be able to see you more clearly during recordings and video calls, the Philips Hue Go Portable Accent Light is a solid choice. It can lie flat on the table or sit propped at an angle facing directly at you.

Using the Philips Hue App — or common smart assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple Home when you use a Hue bridge — you can customize color, brightness, and color warmth, and you can also add it to a greater Philips Hue ecosystem with a Hue bridge connected. There's also a physical button on the back so you can switch between light and effect presets. With a maximum brightness of 520 lumens, it's decently powerful, especially if you're using a bright color like cool white. But because of the power it packs in a small package, battery life takes a hit at a maximum of 2.5 hours when it's not connected to the power adapter (in which case it's powered indefinitely). Plus, since it's RGBW-enabled, you can swap to all kinds of colors and effects once work ends and it's time to throw on a movie or play some games.

The Govee RGBICW Smart Floor Lamp Basic ($99.99 at Govee) is about as effective as smart lighting gets for under $100. You can set it up next to your desk and point it at yourself for direct lighting, or shine it on the wall behind your desk for diffused illumination. At 1000 lumens, the Govee RGBICW Smart Floor Lamp Basic is rather bright for a floor lamp. As the name suggests, you can set it to cool or warm white lighting for an office setting, or your favorite color (or colors via seven individual lighting zones) when you're off the clock. And, because you can easily unplug and move it around, it's a great versatile option to keep in your home office during work hours, then carry it over to your home theater or living room for ambient lighting.

Like most Govee products, customization is simple. Download the Govee app on your smartphone, where you can choose from several effects and presets, create schedules for automatic on/off, and set up smart assistant control through Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Matter. One thing to note is that there's some assembly required here. It ships in a relatively small box, and you'll need to connect the chassis together and slip the light bar into the frame before powering it on.

The panel light design has blown up lately, and for good reason. Not only can you customize color combinations and effects — including warm and cool lighting for professional home office settings — but you can also customize the shape of the lights themselves. For a home office, this means you can position the panels exactly how you want them for the best lighting to help you complete your work. The Govee Glide Hexa Light Panels ($189.99 at Govee for 10 panels) definitely aren't the cheapest option available, but they are some of the most unique.

You can personalize the lights and adjust settings like color, temperature, and scheduling directly from the Govee app on your smartphone, and they're also natively compatible with smart assistants like Google Home and Amazon Alexa out of the box (no smart home hub required). They use an adhesive backing for installation, which is great if you live in an apartment and don't want to mark up the walls. The installation process here is one of the more complicated smart light setups. Because the adhesive backing will lose its grip if you pry it off the wall, it's wise to set aside a significant chunk of time and make a game plan for how you're going to design the lights before you start.

The XTREME Energizer Smart Wi-Fi LED Light Bulb is a great pick if you just want simple operations at a low price. For $13.98 at Amazon, you get a 2-pack of 800-lumen smart bulbs that have native support for Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Apple Siri. Using your smart assistant of choice, you can control bulbs individually or in groups that you create. You might make a group of bulbs at the front of your home office, for example.

You won't get full-range RGB here, but these smart bulbs under $15 do offer the ability for you to set schedules to automatically switch them on and off. You can also dim the lights using a voice command or the Energizer Connect App. Warm white is arguably the best color for productivity in your home office, anyways. Plus, you don't have to buy a complicated (and typically expensive) hub to set up control groups with the XTREME Energizer Smart Wi-Fi LED Light Bulbs like you would with a lot of Philips smart bulbs.

The Govee 15-Inch RGBICWW Smart Ceiling Light Pro ($129.99 at Govee) is by far and away the brightest smart light recommendation on our list at an impressive 4300 lumens, making it an excellent pick if you're looking for consistent diffused lighting across your entire home office. It does need to be connected directly to your home's power, so you'll want to identify a working ceiling light to replace. The good news is that this can be a fairly easy process if you're familiar with DIY. You just unscrew your existing lighting fixture, connect the new one, and then screw the 15-inch RGBICWW Smart Ceiling Light Pro directly in. If you're not comfortable with disconnecting the power or other steps like that, it might be worth calling an electrician out.

Like other Govee products, customization lives inside the Govee app and interacts with supported smart speakers (including Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomeView). You can choose from over 66 'scenes' (lighting color and effect presets), or simply go with a cool or warm white light. The Govee app will also allow you to set up automatic on/off scheduling, so your light will turn on when it's time to work and switch to a fun color preset when work ends, for example. Govee also sells an 18-inch Ceiling Light Pro for $169.99 if you want an even brighter light source (this one clocks in at 4800 lumens) or a 12-inch RGBWW + RGBIC Smart Ceiling Light for $69.99 if you like the idea of this light fixture and want to keep your budget under $100.

In order to select these home office smart lights, we first browsed all major smart light retailers, including Philips, Govee, TP-Link, Amazon, Best Buy, and more. We utilized our own testing and analysis from guides like We Tested 52 Different Smart Light Bulbs To Find The Best Ones and The 7 Best Smart Lights For Your Home Theater. Alongside our own testing, we took user and expert reviews into account, with particular emphasis on reviews that highlighted real-world usage examples.

All recommendations on this list have a minimum review rating of four stars, with several around 4.5 across hundreds or thousands of reviews. Because these smart light recommendations are specifically for the home office, we only considered options that provide cool and warm white lighting for a professional setting (with RGB support as an added bonus). It was also a requirement that these smart light suggestions be easily controlled via an app or smart assistant. Lastly, we sought to include a range of budgets from smart lights at under $15 to premium options closing in on $200.