Interior ceiling lighting options - 'The Monster LED bulb discussion'

Hardware
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I’m in the process of a basement reno and am planning out the lighting portion.

I have used Hue bulbs via the Hue bridge and directly on HAOS via MQTT. The latter being the one I will stick to.

But the prices of Hue bulbs nowadays are causing palpitations. A 6-pack of White+Ambience GU10 RGB is $364.47!!!

I have also tried the Ikea Tradfri GU10 bulbs, the tunable white ones. But they have a problem where you can’t transition between two settings simultaneously. So, if you want to dim the brightness and decrease the temperature, it will quickly do one of those and then slowly transition to the other one. This makes using scenes impossible. Very frustrating.

I have also tried the Shelly GU10 RGB bulbs but they have quirks that annoy me. First, they don’t dim down very low at all. Second, the dimming action is not smooth, you can clearly see the brightness steps during the transition from scene to scene.

So far, the Philips Hue are the only ones that perform properly that I’ve tested. But I can’t afford those with the scale of this project.

Has anyone else played with different vendors and figured out the best performing and budget-friendly options?

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The best smart bulb is- no smart bulb.

All they give you that a $5 dumb dimmable LED bulb and a smart switch don’t is color. Is color that important to you?

If you want color for ambiance or party themes, then I would look at RGB LED strips and a WLED controller. Athom Technology makes WLED controllers with ESPHome already installed.

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