Smart Ceiling Lamp Nanoleaf Imitates a Roof Window
One of my favorite smart finds of last year was the Nanoleaf smart light panels, which I called ” dopamine light.” “I now have a house with Nanoleaf LEDs scattered throughout, filling the house with color, and over the holidays I expanded it outside . With Nanoleaf’s latest offering, the Skylight ($249.99 for a set of three panels), they’re diving into hardware products. As with all smart technology products, there are the occasional hiccups, but overall I’m incredibly happy with the Skylight and suspect it could fill the lighting gap in your home.
Extend your lighting beyond the wiring area
Nanoleaf is announcing Skylight starting in Q2 2023, and I couldn’t wait to try it out. I had a hallway that needed more light and envisioned a row of skylights right down the center. I’ve had them installed for a few weeks now and they’ve lit up the hallway enough that I can now see it’s time to paint the baseboards. Unlike the previous fixture, which illuminated a single point, the Skylight can extend far beyond the original hallway fixture without additional wiring. Think about it for a second: if you have wiring in the center of your room’s ceiling, your light fixture will most likely be emitting light from that location. With Skylight, you start at the wiring location and expand outward. Being smart lights, they can wake you up by gently turning on for a few minutes. I set them to dim in the evening and only turn on 10% when I get up in the middle of the night. They also coordinate with the rest of the Nanoleaf lights, creating a subtle lighting theme that moves with whatever music I play. When it comes to lights, they’re pretty harmless when they’re off, but they’re very effective when they’re on.
Low profile lights
Each of the Skylight panels is just under 12×12 square. Because they snap together on either side, you install them flush against each other. Even though they are made of plastic, their matte surface looks much more expensive. However, I believe that the higher your ceilings, the greater the effect they will have. At a low altitude, they really felt like a throwback to the fluorescent kitchen lights I grew up with.
Nanoleaf wall panels , which come in a variety of shapes and sizes, have been used for ceiling work for years, and I can easily imagine Nanoleaf expanding the Skylight into other shapes. Their website features a range of configurations that show how lighting can be arranged more organically than my straight line to decorate a room.
Each individual panel is 1400 lumens; The LEDs that make up this brightness are capable of displaying 16 million RGBCW colors, or any white color from 2700 to 6500K, which covers the entire cool and warm band. Nanoleaf says they are rated for 25,000 hours of use, which is on par with most LED lights.
Additional installation steps required
Fair warning: Installation is a few steps more difficult than installing a regular fixture, but not more difficult. Nanoleaf does a great job of providing clear video instructions , and after watching them once for review and then walking through them during installation, I was successful the first time. Installation of the first three panels took about 30 minutes. In addition to coordinating the main wiring on the ceiling, you will need to disassemble the first panel and then install the base plate on the ceiling and do the wiring adjustments in the panel itself. While the panel is open, you set up the pairings in whatever configuration you want (additional panels are easy) and then test and cover them all with the top panels. Easily connect them by simply scanning the QR code in the instruction manual (a feature of Nanoleaf products that I love and that works flawlessly every time).
Nanoleaf color schemes are atmosphere
Nanoleaf products integrate with all major hubs: Google, Homekit, Alexa, SmartThings, and, worth mentioning: IFTTT (so you can do all sorts of integrations between Nanoleaf and brands that aren’t in your hub of choice). What’s more, in Nanoleaf’s own app, you can group lighting within rooms and assign color schemes to an individual product or an entire room. These are not just light patterns that remain static; they move in 10 or more movement patterns or can move to music. It doesn’t look like a flashing marquee, but rather like the fireplace subtly changing colors in an ombre pattern. This is how Nanoleaf differs from other brands like Govee . While you can choose a brighter color scheme, the soothing amber hues of “Date Night” or the cloudy blues and grays of “Clouds” are made for relaxing in the living room, at dinner parties, working late in the office, or reading in bed. . There’s a whole shared library of other users’ designs available, and you can create your own using tools that will make your selection look like a pro. And you don’t have to set colors for them – you can just set them to the white color of your choice.
Communication is still a problem
My main complaint with Nanoleaf products is that they can work offline. The solution is usually to simply restart the application. Restarting the app is a solution to get the product back online in the Nanoleaf app but not in Google Home, which is important if you want the lights to turn on and off as part of the automation. As Nanoleaf makes the move to more integral parts of the home and not just decorative lighting, this is a problem they will have to solve.
My second complaint is that these lights don’t support Matter or Threads technology, which doesn’t make much sense since as a company Nanoleaf has been very matter-centric. In the Nanoleaf world, there are two groups of products: those that work in conjunction with their 4D system, which includes most of the wall shapes, and their Matter/Threads line, which does not sync with 4D (the system that reflects colors on the TV and diffuses them around the room). In my opinion, the ability of all the lights to work together in sync is a feature that Nanoleaf lacks.
Bottom line: A delightful addition to the Nanoleaf line with hopes for future updates.
If I had the right room, I could imagine the Skylights stretching organically across the ceiling, playing the Pixies and Vivaldi in sync. If you think of these light bars as pixels, the more there are, the clearer the picture they paint. The cost of the first three is comparable to what you’d spend on a decent light, but if you get serious about the 12-pack , you’ll be paying almost $750. While I don’t like the connection issues, Nanoleaf has always been proactive in updating their products, so I hope we see improvements.