The best smart light strips

This site already has a page on LED strip lights for under cabinets, and it is a different product doing a different job. Those strips are fixed white, high CRI, and chosen to put usable task light on a counter.

The strips here are color-capable and app-controlled, and their job is accent lighting: behind a television, along a shelf, under a bed frame, up the back of a desk. If what you want is to see the vegetables you are chopping, buy the other kind.

Within this category, two specs do almost all of the sorting - and both are frequently missing from the listing.

• Published output. Most color strips advertise LED count and a photograph. A brand willing to publish a lumen figure is telling you something.
• Dedicated white LEDs. A strip that mixes white from red, green and blue never quite gets there. RGBICWW and similar designations mean real warm and cool white emitters are on the strip.

Nanoleaf Essentials Matter Lightstrip - the pick. A stated 2,200 lumen maximum is the highest published figure here by a clear margin, and Matter support means it joins a smart home without depending on one manufacturer's app surviving. The case for buying Matter rather than vendor-locked is in Matter smart bulbs.

LIFX Z TV - for behind a television. 1,500 published lumens, built around the one application where a color strip is genuinely functional rather than decorative: a bias light behind a screen reduces the contrast between a bright picture and a dark wall, which is easier on your eyes over a long evening.

Govee M1 - for effects along the run. RGBICWW means several colors at once along one strip plus dedicated warm and cool white LEDs, which is the combination that makes a strip usable as a plain white accent on the days you do not want a light show. Govee publishes no lumen figure, which is the reason it is not the overall pick.

Govee color bulb - when a strip will not fit. Not a strip at all, and included because the honest answer to plenty of "where do I put a strip" questions is a color bulb in a lamp you already own. It goes in a standard socket and needs no adhesive, no adapter and no surface.

Hide the strip, show the light. A strip you can see directly is a row of bright dots; a strip tucked behind a lip, a shelf edge or a TV bezel is a wash of color on a wall. Almost every disappointing installation is a visible one.

Measure the run before ordering. Strips come in fixed lengths and corners eat more than people expect - going around a TV is four turns, and each one costs you slack. Buy long rather than short; the excess can be trimmed at the marked points on most strips.

Plan for the adapter. Every strip here runs from a plug-in power supply, so there is a cord and a brick to hide. The routing rules are the same as for any corded fixture, and they are in how to hide a plug-in fixture cord.

Removal is the renter risk. Adhesive strips come off painted drywall cleanly if you warm them and pull slowly and parallel to the surface, and take paint with them if you rip them off cold. The technique is in no-drill lighting.