|
I bought a few Hue smart bulbs out of curiosity, and liked it so much that I bought more. I did not buy a smart switch. First, let’s talk about switching on instead: It turned out that there are a lot of situation where I really want to switch the bulb on using the button. However, you can set up what the bulb should do when it starts getting power, and I set it up to turn on at reasonable brightness. So when I come into a room, I just quickly switch the switch twice (off-on). This works very well. As for turning off, which was your complaint, it turns out that even as an energy conscious person, I rather want to turn off the light when I reached my destination. Usually, I will at least quickly be on my phone, iPad or laptop anyway, and it’s very easy to flick the control center to turn the light of the room I came from earlier (plus a few others maybe) off. And while I don’t have a smart switch, I don’t see why you would “remove” any reasons there. One great thing I like about the smart bulbs is that they turn on when I come home, and turn off when I leave. I also have smart sockets by now, and they conveniently cut power to all my entertainment stuff when I leave, eliminating standby power. The other benefit is sitting on the couch at evening, realizing that everything is too bright right now, and just turning most lights off and dimming the remaining ones from where I sit, not having to get up and go through the entire house. |
I don’t have smart bulbs in the bathrooms. I don’t think they add anything. Bathrooms are usually turn light on, stay for a (relatively) short time, turn light off. This is the same reason why when I originally switched to energy saving bulbs, back when those were still very slow, I kept normal bulbs. I want the light in the bathroom to turn on fast, and I spend a short enough time in it to not waste too much energy.
As for guests: Not a problem. If they stay overnight, they will likely use the regular switch and turn their bulb into a dumb one. That’s okay and make sense. If they don’t stay overnight, they are usually not roaming around so much that they have to worry about lights. In the rare cases that they do, the lights temporarily turn into dumb lights, until I make them “smart” again. I don’t remember when this last happened.
Finally, especially if you don’t live alone, lying in bad and just being able to turn everything off, and not just your lights, was worth it so far.