Building New Home - Final Call for Thoughts

Don’t use a smart switch to control current to a smart bulb. Any kind of smart bulb, including LED strips.

If you read the user guides for these, you’ll see that they all say that these bulbs are intended to always be on power and the bulb will decide for itself how much current to draw.

There are two reasons for this.

First, if you cut all current to the smart bulbs, they won’t be able to hear the next “on” command from the network and you will restrict the automations you can do with them.

Second, when you first flip the switch on there is an"inrush" of current. It’s OK if this happens once or twice a year when you have an unexpected power outage. But if you are using a switch to frequently cut current to the lights and turn them back on you can over time damage the radio inside the smart bulbs and significantly shorten the life of the already expensive smart bulbs.

If you want to get smart light strips, and you want to have a switch that controls them, then use either a battery operated switch or a switch on a different part of the circuit. See the following FAQ for discussion of those set ups:

Or use a smart controller like the Fibaro RGBW controller and just use regular dumb LED strips. That’s often the most cost-effective solution. :sunglasses: