Last year, I signed off on 178 Zigbee lightswitches before confirming which Zigbee coordinator they would run on. This year, I would rather hold the dock door shut than repeat that mistake.
Someone asked me what sounds like a simple question: how can smart lighting improve energy efficiency? My blunt answer is: it does not, not by itself. Smart lighting improves energy efficiency only when the network and the behavior plan are designed before the purchase order goes out. That includes the choice of coordinator, the placement of a Zigbee lightswitch, and the decision between an LEDVANCE Smart+ WiFi setup and a larger Zigbee mesh.
That is a strong opinion, and I am okay with it. I have managed lighting retrofits for hotels and commercial buildings for eight years. I have personally made and documented eleven significant mistakes, totaling roughly $40,000 in wasted budget. Now I maintain our team's lighting checklist, mostly so I stop being the person who makes the same error twice.
The Mistake That Made Me Obsess Over the Zigbee Coordinator
In 2021, I ordered 88 WiFi downlights and bulbs for staff corridors and a lounge. The upside was no hub hardware and a simple app. The risk was WiFi congestion and an ever-expanding list of devices on the building network. I kept asking myself if skipping the Zigbee coordinator was worth the inevitable midnight call. I convinced myself it would be fine.
It was not fine. At about thirty devices, the network started to hiccup. By sixty, the assistant manager texted me a photo of a corridor where one bank of lights responded and the next bank did nothing. I placed an order for a Zigbee coordinator the same afternoon, and hit submit with the immediate doubt that I had just created a second problem. I did not relax until the first Zigbee lightswitch paired and reliably controlled a group.
I don't have hard data on how many projects skip network planning, but based on my own support logs, my sense is that it is a leading cause of failed smart lighting rollouts. The lights are usually not the problem. The missing coordinator is.
How Can Smart Lighting Improve Energy Efficiency? Look Past the LED Strip
I know it sounds backwards, but a LEDVANCE Smart LED Strip is not an energy saving device by itself. It is a dimmable, schedulable light source. The saving comes from the schedule and the control.
Here is the math that changed my thinking. A 15-watt LED strip left on 24 hours per day uses about 131 kWh per year. At $0.15 per kWh, that's $19.71. Put that LEDVANCE Smart LED Strip on a schedule that runs only during actual work hours, about six hours per day, and the waste drops by 75 percent. No product spec sheet can deliver that saving.
The bigger wins were above my head, not under a cabinet. Six 12-watt downlights left on overnight are 72 watts. Ten extra hours per night, every night, is roughly 263 kWh per year, or about $39 per room at $0.15 per kWh. If that happens in forty rooms, the building is losing $1,500 a year simply because someone did not turn off lights. That is what smart lighting should solve.
My rule now: buy the LEDVANCE Smart+ WiFi gear for small standalone spaces, because it works without a hub. For anything larger than one meeting room, go Zigbee and treat the coordinator as essential infrastructure, not an optional accessory.
Why a Zigbee Lightswitch Belongs in the Plan
Zigbee is my usual choice for guest floors and common areas because it is a mesh. But here is the detail I learned the hard way: a Zigbee lightswitch is not simply a wall control. It is part of a mesh network that needs a Zigbee coordinator to manage groups, schedules, and scenes. Without that coordinator, the switch might control one light, but it cannot run the intelligent routines that create energy efficiency. With the coordinator, one press can turn off an entire zone.
During our latest retrofit, we installed a Zigbee lightswitch next to every meeting room entrance and paired it to the lighting coordinator. The evening shift knows the routine: last person out, press once, all non-essential loads off. It is boring. It is reliable. It saves more than any app feature.
Honestly, I'm still not sure why one batch of switches needed a firmware update before it would remember a scene. My best guess is that the manufacturer changed something in the Zigbee stack and did not change the label. That uncertainty is exactly why our checklist now says update before install and test at scale before ordering hundreds.
The Four-Step Plan That Finally Worked
So, how can smart lighting improve energy efficiency in an actual building? In our case, this four-step plan is what worked.
- Walk the building at 2 a.m. and find the waste. We found fifteen lights on in an empty lobby, a staff kitchen strip glowing over an empty counter, and two meeting rooms at full brightness. Those are the exact places where a Zigbee lightswitch earns its keep.
- Choose the network before the fixtures. For a small office, LEDVANCE Smart+ WiFi is fine because you don't need extra hardware. For a multi-room building, pick a Zigbee coordinator first, choose compatible Zigbee lightswitches and smart strips, and confirm everything is updated before installation. If you cannot name your coordinator, your project is not ready for smart lighting yet.
- Make off automatic, not voluntary. A LEDVANCE Smart LED Strip under the kitchen prep counter is scheduled with the cleanup shift instead of running 24 hours. A Zigbee lightswitch at the service entrance gives housekeeping an explicit all-off button. The goal is to design for the moment when everyone forgets.
- Assign one owner. If no single person owns the coordinator, the network stays healthy for a month and slowly falls apart. We now have a named operator for every smart zone. After the third failed rollout, I made that non-negotiable.
When I Would Tell You Not to Buy Smart Lighting
I'm not here to make every light bulb smart. There are cases where a smart system is the wrong budget.
- If your lights are already used only when someone is in the room, a smart lighting system will not create much additional energy saving.
- If nobody will manage the Zigbee coordinator or reset the network when something misbehaves, buy a traditional occupancy sensor instead. It may be less impressive, but it will still turn lights off.
- If you are installing one LED strip under a kitchen cabinet for two hours a day, a simple plug-in timer can do almost the same job for less money.
To be fair, the LEDVANCE Smart+ WiFi products are easy to use and a logical first step. But for most commercial projects, I recommend a Zigbee-based network with a real coordinator. It works for maybe 80 percent of the retrofits I see. How do you know if you are in the other 20 percent? If the owner of the building will not let you touch the WiFi router, or if no one will be responsible for the system after installation, buy simpler controls and leave smart lighting for another project.
Final Thought: Keep It Boring
After eight years and too many mistakes, I believe the question how can smart lighting improve energy efficiency has an unglamorous answer. It improves efficiency by turning things off when they should be off. It makes sure a LEDVANCE Smart LED Strip is not glowing at 1 a.m. for an empty counter. It gives the last person in a meeting room a Zigbee lightswitch that closes the whole scene with one press.
But none of that happens without a Zigbee coordinator and a plan. If someone asked me for a starting point, I would tell them to buy the coordinator first, not the bulbs. The first smart thing you need in a building is a network that knows what should happen after everyone leaves.