My backyard made me a color-changing smart lighting convert

I’ll admit it. I was wrong . Wildly colorful lighting is delightful for your smart home — well, outdoors, at least. Smart lighting is one of my favorite features of the smart home — it combines convenience with ambiance, letting you change the entire look of your room with just a press of a button. But, other than the occasional pop of color , mostly in my kids’ rooms and outdoors around the holidays, I’ve never found much use for color-changing lights. I prefer the subtler effects of tunable white light combined with dimming to set the scene indoors, and that preference also extended to outdoor lighting. Until this summer. With an influx of new outdoor lighting products over the last year or so, I decided to see how far outdoor smart lighting has come: Are products with color-changing and gradient lighting, along with RGBICW (where you get colors and whites and can control LEDs individually), worth the extra investment, or are they still more garish than gorgeous? To find out, I tested various string lights, “permanent” exterior lighting, a giant lamppost, and a wall of light in my yard. Overall, smart outdoor lighting has come a long way, and while there’s still potential to go over the top, today’s options offer a surprisingly effective blend of fun and style — if you stick with one brand. I focused on Govee for this article because it offers one of the broadest lineups and has a few truly wild options, including that 8-foot wall of light. …