Before I do, I was wondering if someone can make a good case for Hue (or some other smart) bulbs. I can not think of a single reason why I would want colored light bulbs anywhere in my house.
I can see perhaps where it would be nice to change the color temp from warm white to cool white. I'm building a virtual pipe organ and while I'm working on it, nice bright light would be good, whereas if I'm practicing, a softer warm white might be nicer.
would require me to install cans with sockets, plus a Hue hub, and add a dependency on Hubitat and an app to to support local control of the lights. The HE hub would be about 40' from the lights, so I may need a Zigbee repeater as well.
Going the Hue route would add a fair amount of complexity and cost at least double. Much as I love tinkering, I'm not sure I see the value here. Am I missing something?
The only area or use I recommend "smart" bulbs are these two:
Table / Floor lamps
Seasonal use for planned color changes
Others disagree and put smart bulbs everywhere and it's costly and (to me) a mess of having to hack together controls to ensure the bulbs don't lose power.
I've have a house full of hue lights and have for a long time and love them. But if I was starting off fresh today I might get what you are getting and use Lutron dimmers. With the Lutron hub you would have full control from HE and the pico wireless switches are wonderful. I just discovered the Picos after just buying an HE and reading this forum. As you point out it's a lot lower cost and complexity and I haven't used the color that much (but it is cool). One thing I would make sure of though is if the dimmer works smoothy with the lights. I tried out three different dimmers on stock LED lights in my garage and it was a buzzy mess so didn't use them.
Most of my lights are rgbw and I use them almost exclusively for circadian lighting. Full color bulbs are able to create a much warmer light than the bulbs that only do color temperature. The Hue lights work the best, and can change fast enough to use as a light show, syncing to the music. They also only need to be in range of the Hue hub. I have never had to rejoin a Hue bulb; they always just work.
I have Hue white bulbs in my kitchen. I use a cool white from sunrise to sunset, and a warm white from sunset to sunrise. I only have one color Hue bulb — it's in a table lamp — and honestly I rarely use the color for anything.
The kitchen bulbs are on a toggle switch, and I use one of these to cover the switch. It allows for turning on/off the kitchen lights and dimming them without turning off the switch. It keeps visitors from messing up my automation. It pairs with the Hue bridge, not with my HE hub.
I'm like @Ken_Fraleigh, I have rgb hue bulbs, not exclusively, but have quite a few hue go's and a couple of their colour bulbs in lamps. When I want to dim the lights a considerable amount for a "relax" type mode the orange colour you can get with these is much nicer than what you can achieve with their ambience bulbs. For me and my use I don't know that this justifies the expense on its own, but I certainly like the outcome.
In terms of smart bulbs vs switches, I feel like bulbs offer more flexibility and less of a commitment than putting the smarts in the infrastructure. If you want to change one or more bulbs to get a different effect or different features, you don't need to mess with the electrics.
From my perspective, I wouldn't use "integrated" anything from the house brand of a big box store. Not saying that some of Lowes house brands aren't fine, but I've had poor experience with any of the "house-brand" LEDs in the past.
Personally, I'd install cans, and then buy some Philips, GE, or Sylvania dimmable LED potlights in the color you prefer.
I use Hue bulbs in table lamps and supplementary lights, and my outdoor fixtures. For the table lamps and supplementary lights, the Hue just works better than retrofitting a lamp with a dimmer, or using a plug-in dimmer.
For the outdoor lights...well, I had them, and it was convenient.
The only other place I use them, is where I screwed up in my lighting plan design for my living room. I created 2 arrays of pot lights "front" and "back". Unfortunately, I have 2 virtual rooms in this space, which correspond to "left" and "right". So to solve this problem, I have 4 HUE BR30's in Front and Back, and create lighting groups in Hubitat (or you could use Hue) to create "virtual rooms". Then I added Samsung Buttons and some logic, and the TV Room and Fireplace Room now both have independent lighting.
Other than (historically) changing from Bright White (Daylight) to Warm White, I never use the colors in the few bulbs that have them, and typically only buy the white ambience bulbs.
Good Quality (name brand) BR30 Bulbs in cans and a dimmer from Lutron, Innovelli, Zooz or GE is (IMO) the way to go.
I'm in agreement w/@jeubanks - bulbs in table/floor lamps where I can place a button (Picos) that I'm sure will keep family members from using the lamp switch.
Other use is for notifications (red=door unlocked, or fire, or whatever).
I don't care about modifying my light colors for the season or time of day - I stay w/soft white/incandescent all the time. No sleeping issues.
Aside from that using bulbs would be a waste for me, as I have smart switches on all lights in ceiling/wall fixtures, and wouldn't be using the smart bulb's features.
It was funny the last time I had a power outage and I was sitting at the table with a torch when I remembered I had all these super-expensive battery-powered hue go's that I could use to light up the whole room. Again, this doesn't justify the cost, but a nice added benefit.
I use a lot of circadian lighting throughout the day. Currently I'm using the LIFX Day & Dusk bulbs for the bedroom because they have a super wide range of 1500k-9000k. However, they can sometimes be finicky and slow because they are WiFi bulbs, not Zigbee.
I've been undecided whether to replace them all with the Sengled Element Color Plus bulbs, which have a narrower range of 2000k-6500k, but still wider than all the rest. (Unless someone knows otherwise) But Zigbee certainly would be faster and more reliable.
Hue lightstrips work great for mood lighting in drapery trays, ceiling trays, fireplace surround, under vanity lights. In fact, my wife gave me a Litter Robot for Christmas this year, and I have rules set so that the color of the bathroom under vanity lights change when the litter pan needs emptying.
I have some color hue bulbs light red to indicate when the garage door is open. Our dog will bolt across the street if the overhead garage door is open when we take him through the garage to do his business outside.
Teenage daughter. LED strips around the ceiling of her bedroom aren't enough to satisfy her artistic flair. Just yanked the 5 GU-10 dumb bulbs from the track light in her room and replaced with RGB bulbs, and made her a dashboard so she can color her room to her hearts content. Haven't seen her in days...
Similar to others, I use Hue rgb bulbs, paired to the Hue bridge, in several table and floor lamps. I have lamps with Hue rgb bulbs behind a couple of my tv’s that turn to orange to indicate that the garage door is open, or that the side gate is open. I have Picos on their pedestals to control the lights.
Although more expensive, I find Hue bulbs to be superior to competing rgb bulbs.
For my primary, overhead lighting, I use dumb white bulbs controlled by Lutron Caseta dimmers or switches.
The Sylvania rgbw bulbs, rt 5/6, and light strips all reach down to 1500-1800K and up to 7000K depending on the model. Of the bulb replacements, the rt 5/6 have the richest color and best reliability in my experience (A19 bulbs not so much).
I would definitely choose smart lamps. The big plus would be that you can control the six lamps independently (if you wish). You could also turn the light nice and bright, where you are playing with your organ while your audience can sit in dimmed lightning.
I would choose for at least some color bulbs - better to have them and not use them, than to miss them later on. While you don't want the place to look like a whorehouse, sometimes a splash of color can do wonders for a room... But as mentioned above, you could also opt for table lamps or lightstrips for color.
Ah, I knew someone would know! Do the Sylvania bulbs still cause mesh issues? They used to be troublemakers - not sure if the new models still have that problem.
*Edit: Where do you see the A19 bulbs reaching 1700/1800? Everything I see says they only go down to 2700.
while your audience can sit in dimmed lightning.
