I think these new smart lights are perfect for bringing the Xmas cheer

Hue Festavia smart coloured string lights

(Image credit: Signify)

published 10 November 2022

Here's a brilliant way to brighten up the winter months: new smart lighting from Hue and Nanoleaf enable you to make any room more magical. The new Hue Festavia string lights are definitely going on my Christmas tree this year, and I'm sorely tempted by the new Nanoleaf Lines Squared too.

The two firms' latest products are very different but retain the key features of all the best smart lights: excellent app control and virtually unlimited colours. I love my smart lights, and I think these are both very welcome additions.

What will you choose: new Hues or Nanoleaf's Lines?

The new Hue Festavia is a set of 250 LEDs on a 20-metre cord, and rather brilliantly it has the same gradient effects that you'll find on its gradient light strips – so if you want the top of your Christmas tree to be a different colour from the bottom or you just want to create a cool lighting effect, the Festavia will be just the job. There's also a new lighting style, Scattered, that spreads up to five colours randomly across the LEDs for a suitably festive effect. They'll go on sale on 15 November at Philips-hue.com for £139.99.

The new Nanoleaf Lines Squared smart lights.

The Nanoleaf Lines Squared are rather different: they're backlit light bars, and you can now connect them at 90-degree angles as well as with the previously available 60-degree connectors. That opens up a whole new world of shapes and styles, and the starter kits are very affordable at £89.99 for a 4-pack. Additional expansion packs are £49.99 for three Lines and connectors. The Lines Squared packs are already available in Europe (€99.99 / €59.99) and UK users can pre-order for delivery by the end of November from Nanoleaf.me.

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).