The Best Matter-Compatible Holiday Lights

Ah, the holiday season—time to drag out last year’s tangled mess of twinkly lights, only to discover that half of them have mysteriously stopped working and require an obscure bulb that's no longer sold. But with our pick of Matter-compatible festive lighting, you can brighten these dark days and have the neighborhood's most impressive, sparkly, and multicolored house. 

What to Look for in Smart Holiday Lighting

Mounting and Effect

First and foremost, what effect are you looking to achieve, and where do you want to mount them? String lights are for trees and other temporary installations where you need that traditional twinkly holiday light feel. Govee even offers smart Matter-compatible icicle lights if you want something a little more impactful. Neither of these can be left out year round, but they can be used inside and outside temporarily, and offer the greatest flexibility with how to mount them. 

Beyond that, permanent outdoor lights can illuminate your entire home and be used throughout the year for various events, but may not fit the traditional idea of holiday lighting. They look more architectural in design with a distinctive downward-facing lighting pattern and require significantly more effort to fix to your home structure; some even resort to hiring a professional fitter. Permanent outdoor lights look best if they can be mounted around 6-12 inches away from the wall, which may not be possible. 

Matter-Compatibility: Nice to Have, But You Lose Features

While this is a list of Matter-compatible holiday lighting, you should know that Matter restricts you to only a subset of what these lights are capable of. You will need to use the manufacturer’s app to access dynamic scenes, as Matter only allows for single color control and brightness across the entire fixture. Matter does offer a very useful way to remote control and turn them off from bed, or automate with the rest of your Matter system, but other functionality is limited. Thankfully, you don’t need to choose Matter or the native app; both can be used simultaneously, as long as you don’t try to control the colors through Matter, your scene selections in the manufacturer’s app will be saved when you power off. 

Your Existing Ecosystem

Although the whole point of Matter is to provide compatibility between devices from different manufacturers and ecosystems, as mentioned, the features exposed through Matter are very limited. If you’ve already bought into one system, you should stick with it to create coherent displays across multiple products. Having five different apps to control your lights is not fun (believe me, I have an entire folder on my phone just for lighting!) 

The Best Holiday Lighting

Govee Permanent Outdoor Lights 2

Govee’s ecosystem has expanded to cover every kind of lighting you can think of, and they’ve gone all-in on ensuring their latest products are Matter-compatible; the Permanent Outdoor Lights 2 are no exception. Pictured above are the original Permanent Outdoor Lights that are mounted on my home; the newest iteration are 55% brighter and include a dedicated warm and white LED in each module (up to 40 lumens), but even this version casts a vast amount of ambient light at full brightness. 

Though all of the products on this list offer various scenes and DIY modes to create unique lighting styles, Govee’s offerings work with their DreamView system, which makes your lights reflect your TV or gaming desktop, which might be fun for outdoor movie nights—or just impressive music-synced light shows. 

At $300 for 100ft of lighting (each 50ft section contains 36 modules), the Outdoor Lights 2 offer excellent value, and can be extended up to 150ft. Govee also tends to offer deep discounts during Black Friday and other events. 

The only downside is that as Govee’s product selection has grown in complexity, so has their app. It can be quite daunting for a beginner who just wants some pretty Christmas lights!

Nanoleaf Permanent Outdoor Lights

At $200 for 50ft with 30 LED modules, Nanoleaf is a little more expensive than Govee, but the app is easier to use, and they have an elegant mounting system that slides to hide the screws, as well as a cable track. At 50 lumens maximum brightness per module, they're similar to Govee, so it may ultimately come down to which you're already invested in.  

Govee Christmas String Lights 2

Don’t let the name deceive you though; the app contains scenes for all kinds of holidays and events: string lights aren’t just for Christmas. In several sizes from 66 to 328ft(!) and clear or green cabling, you should find one to suit your size of tree, starting at $99.  

In my video review, I used 66ft version wrapped around a 7ft tall Xmas tree, but you might like a higher density of LEDs, so adjust your choice based on that. 

The Christmas String Lights 2 include a clever shape-mapping feature that uses your camera to understand exactly where you’ve placed the lights on your tree. This allows for dynamic scene displays that work with the shape of your tree, rather than along the length of the string. 

While the LED string itself is waterproof for use outdoors, the control box isn’t, and I wouldn’t suggest leaving these up permanently. 

Nanoleaf Matter Smart Multicolor Outdoor String Lights

For anyone who wants the feel of traditional colored bulbs but with a modern twist, the Nanoleaf outdoor string lights have a unique crystal shape, starting at $130 for 50ft (20 bulbs), and extendable up to 150ft. These are IP65/67 rated and can be left up year-round, making them perfect for your patio and other outdoor entertainment areas. 

While Govee also has bulb-shaped outdoor string lights, they aren't Matter-compatible. 

Maybe Avoid (And Why)

Philips Hue Festavia String Lights

If you’re already invested in a full Hue home, the Festavia string lights are an obvious choice, and can even be synced to your entertainment zones. But for anyone else, the limited scene selection and lack of customization options mean there are better options available. 

Technically, the Festavia lights run over Zigbee and are not compatible with Matter out of the box. However, with the addition of a Hue hub (which you almost certainly have if you're already using Hue), all your Hue lighting can be bridged to Matter. If you don’t already have a hub, the Festavia string lights are a bad choice for Matter compatibilty—as well as coming in at a premium price, costing $120 for a mere 100 LED string (twice the price per LED of Govee’s offering). 

LIFX Permanent Outdoor Lights 

With a superb total output of 2700 lumens across 30 LED modules (90 lumens each for pure white mode), the standard pack covers 50ft for $200, but can be extended up to 200ft.

Unfortunately, they appear to be exclusive to Home Depot, and there's little in the way of hands-on reviews yet, so it's difficult to actually recommend them unless you're already keen on LIFX elsewhere. 

What About Eufy?

Eufy offers a range of smart outdoor holiday lighting, but for some reason, has decided not to support the Matter standard. Instead, they’re all in on their “WonderLink” system, which allows your lighting to connect to your Eufy security camera with facial recognition, and change color based on who is at the door. I’m sure that's a feature consumers will value much more than cross-compatible smart home standards.

Which Holiday Lights to Buy?

For one-off purchases, the products across manufacturers are broadly similar, all offering a variety of holiday scenes, such that your deciding factor might ultimately be which you can find a deal on.

But in the broader picture, when creating music shows and coherent lighting scenes that can sync across products and throughout your home lighting fixtures, Govee shines above the rest with its range of integrations—despite the complexity of their app.