The smart home industry is quite literally having its “light bulb moment.” With more and more homes and businesses phasing out energy inefficient incandescent bulbs in favor of LED-powered lighting, the smart home industry is capitalizing on the LED trend as consumers upgrade their lighting solutions. In many countries, the high cost of electricity is driving people towards LED bulb technology, and for those looking to conserve energy and do their part to combat climate change, LED upgrades are an easy way to reduce total power consumption.

For the smart home industry, leading manufacturers can offer consumers the ability to vary lighting patterns as a significant deterrent to burglars, making smart lighting a logical and economical way to increase home security. Several smart lighting companies are also offering direct control from smartphones, meaning that it is no longer necessary to have a separate lighting hub.

According to Interpret’s NMM: Global Profiles®, smart lighting is the most popular smart home product across 14 countries after smart speakers and displays, with especially strong adoption in India, China, and Vietnam. Given the widespread adoption of smart lighting, we can expect to see increasing levels of integration with other smart home devices (in addition to smart speakers), including smart locks, security systems, smart doorbells. In fact, a number of high-end lighting companies have already integrated smart speaker technology into wall switches.

“As builders incorporate smart home features into new housing, and as consumers update their lighting, we expect smart lighting to become a standard for homes across the globe, meaning that smart homes will control lighting less by switches, but increasingly by knowing and sensing occupants’ patterns and desired scenarios,” said Stuart Sikes, Interpret SVP of Research.