Smart Outdoor Lighting for Summer Parties

Aug 03, 2023

Keep the festivities going into the evening with these intelligent lights

By John ElliotOriginally Published July 4, 2023

Photo: Pablo

Photo: Pablo

Summer is the season for outdoor entertaining. But if your fetes run until the wee hours, then you'll need some exterior lighting to continue the festivities.

From strings of smart bulbs and colorful freestanding cubes to path-illuminating bollards and music-playing lamps, today’s intelligent outdoor lighting will bring fun and functionality to your gatherings.

Here are our picks for smart outdoor lights ideal for entertaining.

Twinkly

A staple of all manner of outdoor spaces, string lights provide ambience and illumination with a wide range of flexibility. But what if they could be even more convenient—and colorful? Thanks to Twinkly Strings they can. Offering 100 to 600 LED bulbs per box with green or black wiring, Strings allow users to control all the major functions of the lights (on/off, brightness, pattern) directly from their phones, or via voice-command through Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Apple home kit. But Twinkly Strings also allow users to play with color. The weather-proof bulbs can display up to 16 million different colors, all of which can be found in the accompanying app—or you could let Twinkly take control. In addition to pre-built palettes and patterns, you can sync your Twinkly lights to your music, if your gathering has more of a dance party vibe.

Twinkly Strings come in 100, 250, 400 and 600 bulb boxes, ranging from $74 to $239 per box.

Twinkly

Twinkly

Philips Hue

Philips Hue

Philips Hue

If you’re fortunate enough to have a sizable outdoor space, guiding guests to the appropriate areas for entertaining can be something of a tricky task, especially after dark. Fortunately, there’s the Calla Outdoor Bollard from Philips Hue. These tiny minimalist towers, which look something like smart speakers, offer an unobtrusive way to illuminate paths—and provide great background mood lighting for your party. Each bollard is topped with Philips Hue's notable White and Color Ambiance bulb, giving owners access to more than 16 million colors and 50,000 shades of warm and cool white light—an expansive palette to play with that ensures no two parties will be the same. In addition to offering complete remote control via an accompanying app on your smartphone or tablet, the bollards can be set to schedules, automatically turning on and off at pre-programmed times, or attached to a sunrise/sunset mode.

Philips Hue Calla Outdoor Bollards are available for $129 per bollard.

Smart & Green

Looking for a truly unique way to light your party? Invest in the Cube from Smart & Green. Available in small and large sizes, Cubes are exactly what they sound like—six-sided, cordless, water-resistant, translucent molded polyethylene LED cube lamps. Offering six to eight hours of light between charging, Cubes come with seven pre-set colors—and unlimited custom colors—all of which can be controlled, along with dimming, intensity and schedule, via a bluetooth connection and the accompanying Smart & Green app. Cube owners can even create a mesh network among their cubes to sync color and intensity changes across lamps.

Smart & Green Cubes are available for $295 or $350 per cube, depending on size.

Smart & Green

Smart & Green

Pablo

Pablo

Pablo

Looking for a light that also brings the party? The Pablo Uma is happy to do double duty. This sleek and handsome portable lantern comes complete with a leather carrying strap, a Warm-Dim LED body—and an omnidirectional woofer and tweeter, allowing users to play their favorite tunes, or whatever else they have on their phone, directly out of the Uma via a Bluetooth connection. The Uma can serve as the center of any outdoor gathering, as it provides a full 360 degrees of music and light, each of which is easily adjusted from your phone.

The Pablo Uma is available for $599.