Yes, your smart bulb can set the mood in the room with its seemingly endless color options and lighting effects. If you want to use lighting as an accent to help decorate your place, though, we have a feeling the LIFX Tile Kit will work a whole lot better.
A set of five tile-shaped lighting units designed to be mounted on walls, the kit allows you to decorate any room with unique ambient light displays. Seriously, it’s like having an abstract painting on your wall, except instead of paint, it uses light to create shapes and images, making for a unique addition to any home interior.
The LIFX Tile Kit consists of five tiles that can be arranged in any configuration, although you’ll have to run a wire across the wall if you install them apart since, you know, they all draw power from a single outlet (or a power pack, depending on which kit you picked up). Each tile comes with 64 individual zones which can display any of 16 million colors, allowing you to create abstract-style graphics just by adjusting how each zone lights up. Those color layouts, by the way, can be static or dynamic, so you can make it look like a bunch of shapes moving across your wall for a really cool effect.
The lights, by the way, can be set to illuminate at anywhere between one percent and 100 percent, so you can make some zones light up in a dimmed hue while others provide brightness at full blast. All adjustments, from layouts and dimming, are done via the companion app, which is available for iOS, Android, and Windows 10 users.
The LIFX Tile Kit connects to your Wi-Fi directly, so you can access it to change the layout anywhere you are. Yes, that means you can annoy your wife (or whoever’s home) by making ugly layouts while you’re in the office. Do note, annoying someone is likely to make them pull the plug out of the power outlet, so there’s no guarantee how long you can actually enjoy being the annoying dude controlling the light from outside the house.
Want to cover your wall in these colorful tiles? Sadly, a maximum of five tiles can be controlled in an automated and coordinated fashion, so you’ll need to buy additional kits and control them separately if you want more light-up tiles covering your wall. Basically, you won’t be able to easily make a single large display unless you actually take time to meticulously design your layouts.
Each tile, by the way, measures 7.8 x 7.8 inches, so they should make a recognizable presence in any room of the house. They mount using 3M Commands Hooks on the back, so you should be able to install them without any drilling necessary. Do note, these are designed strictly for indoor use and aren’t weatherized, so avoid placing them any place where they can get wet.
Slated to come out in November, the LIFX Tile Kit is priced at $249.99.