Smart Lighting Scenes for Watching Live Sports

The first time I tried to use smart lights for a big football match, I made the living room look like a nightclub. I had set a scene with the bulbs in our team's colors, pulsing gently. It lasted about four minutes before my partner asked me to turn it off because she could not see the screen properly and felt slightly seasick.

After a season of experimenting, I have settled on a few lighting scenes that genuinely make watching sport at home better. None of them involve pulsing team colors.

What good lighting for watching sport does

Watching a match is different from watching a film. It lasts two hours or more, people talk, move around, eat and check their phones. The lighting needs to support all of that without making the screen harder to see.

• Reduce glare on the screen. No bright light should reflect off the television.
• Keep the room bright enough to move around. Nobody wants to trip over a coffee table at half time.
• Soften the contrast between a bright screen and a dark room, which reduces eye strain.
• Change at the right moments, such as half time and the final whistle.

The three scenes I use

All three run on a basic setup: smart bulbs in two floor lamps, a bias light strip behind the television and a voice assistant.

The bias light is the single most useful piece of this setup. A soft, neutral light behind the screen reduces the contrast between a bright picture and a dark wall, and makes a long match much easier on the eyes. It is especially helpful for late kick offs.

Timing the scenes

I switch scenes by voice: Match mode, Half time, Full time. I tried automating them with a match schedule and it was more trouble than it was worth, because kick off times move, matches go to extra time and half time never falls at exactly the same minute.

Voice control has the added benefit that anyone in the room can use it. When my brother comes over to watch, usually with his phone in one hand following other results and his pool picks on ankertoto, he calls Half time as soon as the whistle goes, because he wants the lights up to see his screen. It has become part of the ritual.

If you are new to scenes, setting up lighting scenes you will actually use explains how to set them up in the common apps.

The advice I disagree with: sync the lights to the TV

Several smart lighting systems offer a feature that syncs the colors of your bulbs to what is on screen, using a camera, a box between your devices or an app. For films and games, it can be impressive. For live sport, I think it is a bad idea.

Football broadcasts are mostly green, with fast camera cuts, replays and adverts. Synced lights turn the room a flickering green and then jump to whatever colors the next advert uses. It is distracting, it makes the picture harder to follow and it is tiring over a full match. Every guest I have tried it on has asked me to switch it off within twenty minutes.

Static, neutral lighting behind the screen does much more for the viewing experience. Save the sync features for films.

Avoiding glare

Glare is the most common lighting problem in living rooms with a large television. Check your setup during the day and at night:

1. Sit where you normally watch and look at a dark scene on the screen.
2. Note any reflections of lamps, windows or ceiling lights.
3. Move or dim the lamps causing reflections, or change their angle.
4. Consider blackout curtains for daytime matches if windows reflect.

Lamps placed to the side of the seating, slightly behind the viewers, rarely cause glare. Ceiling lights almost always do.

Choosing the right color temperature

Color temperature matters more than brightness for long viewing sessions. Warm white, around 2700K, feels cozy but can make the picture look slightly blue by comparison. Cool white, above 5000K, feels harsh in a living room at night. For the bias light behind the screen, a neutral white around 6500K is the standard recommendation, because it matches the white point most televisions are calibrated to, so the picture looks accurate.

For the lamps around the room, I stay warmer, around 2700K to 3000K. The combination of a neutral glow behind the screen and warm light at the sides keeps the picture accurate while the room still feels comfortable. Most smart bulbs let you set this precisely in the app, and it is worth spending five minutes getting right.

What it cost

My setup cost about 110 dollars: two smart bulbs for the lamps and a bias light strip sized for a 55 inch television. It uses the voice assistant I already had. If you are deciding between smart bulbs and switches for a room like this, smart bulbs vs smart switches: which to buy first will help.

The team color scene still exists on my phone. I use it once a season, for about thirty seconds after a big win. The rest of the time, the room is lit for watching the match, not decorating it. More ideas are in our Smart Lighting section.