Do you need a smart bulb for the Philips Hue Inara Outdoor Wall Lantern?

With the Philips Hue bulb that comes with the Inara Outdoor Wall Lantern, you can utilize pretty much all of the features that make Hue's smart lighting great, giving you a full-custom outdoor lighting experience. The bulb is a white Philips Hue E26 smart bulb, meaning that unfortunately, you won't be able to tap into the entire Hue spectrum of colors, but you'll still be able to reap all the other benefits of having smart lights. For instance, with your Inara Outdoor Wall Lantern, you can do the following:

Control your lights remotely while you're at home or away: After connecting your Inara Wall Lantern to the Hue Bridge, you basically have the freedom to control your light in whatever way works best for you personally. You can install a Philips Hue switch indoors (also connected to the bridge) to turn your light on and off, you can control it with your phone using the Apple Home or Philips Hue app, or you can control it using a virtual assistant like Siri or Amazon Alexa and your own voice. What's more, you don't even have to be home to control your lights — if you're on your way home and want to turn your lights on so you don't have to stumble around in the dark once you get there, you can.

Set schedules and timers: If you know you'll be home from work at the same time every day during the week, you can create a custom lighting schedule so that your lights automatically turn on right before you arrive home. If you know that you'd like your lights to be on for a designated amount of time at certain times throughout the day, you can also put the light on a timer so you're not wasting any energy. Philips Hue also offers a sunset/sunrise routine that will automatically turn on, brighten, dim, and turn off your lights.

Use geolocation to turn your lights on or off automatically: If you prefer things a bit less scheduled, you can also do this really cool thing where you put your lights in either Home or Away mode. Then, once you depart or return, your lights will use your location to either shut off or turn on.