homeassistant

Welcome to Home Assistant. If you are starting out it’s best to start small, pick a particular room or two you think would benefit from smart features and go from there.

I have tried a few of the IKEA bulbs and they have worked OK. For lighting however I much prefer to to use smart relays or smart switches. The problem with smart bulbs is they don’t play nicely with dumb switches, and they depend too much on a working HA instance.

If a smart bulb is turned off by a dumb light switch, it can’t be turned back on via Zigbee - because dumb switch cuts all power to the bulb including the Zigbee chip. Likewise, if you turn a smart bulb off via HA and then HA breaks, it’s going to be difficult to turn the smart bulb back on until HA is back up and running.

Smart relays and smart switches avoid both these problems. They still function normally as physical switches, and will function independently even when HA is down. The main downside is these require minor electrical wiring work to fit, so consult and electrician if you are comfortable with that.

My current favourites are the SONOFF ZBMINI smart relay and Samotech SM232 smart dimmer switch. The latter is one of the few UK style smart dimmer switches available (I am assuming you are in the UK as you linked to Amazon UK and mention bayonet fitting bulbs). I prefer to only use smart bulbs in lamps etc for secondary or accent lighting.

Another option for lamps is to use smart plugs, IKEA, SONOFF and Smarthings Uk smart plugs have all worked well for me.