Oliver Haslam on March 29, 2017, 6:59 am

IKEA Enters Home Automation Space With Tradfri Line Of Smart Bulbs

Swedish furniture and accessory store IKEA has today announced its own range of smart lighting. Called Trådfri, which is Swedish for “wireless,” the line includes everything you could possibly need to kick off your home automation fascination, starting at $80.

That $80 will get you two bulbs, a remote, and a gateway hub, which you will need in order to connect everything to the accompanying app. If that whets your whistle, then you can also splurge on a motion sensor if you think that may be the missing piece of your home automation puzzle.

If you are wondering about the bulbs in particular, the Trådfri offerings apparently have three white color temperature options (2200K, 2700K, and 4000K) and IKEA says that each bulb will last around 25,000 hours before it needs to be replaced.

As for availability, IKEA says that the kits will roll out in its native country of Sweden this month, with the UK receiving stock in April. No information has been given for further international rollouts as yet, but it is a fairly safe bet that the United States and other countries should see the Trådfri line of smart lighting arrive in the coming weeks.

“The Ikea vision is to bring affordable home furnishing solutions to the many people. We know from research that existing smart lighting technology is perceived to be too expensive and difficult to understand, so we have worked to remove those barriers to make smart lighting more accessible,” IKEA Home Furnishing expert Helen Longford said in a statement.

The negative amongst all this? IKEA does not mention anywhere whether its stuff will support Apple’s HomeKit or not, which we suspect means that it doesn’t, and that’s a shame. With HomeKit beginning to finally gather pace, it would have been nice to see Trådfri support it. It would’ve also given the product line a better chance of competing against other companies in the same space, such as Philips, with its Hue line.