Ok I’ll admit it, I’ve an addiction to fairy lights. I love them. The way they immediately enchant a room, the way they make any garden magical, from the solar string lights to Christmas tree lights, outdoor string lights, like the Festavia lights from Philips Hue to the Twinkly Dots, I love them all.

However, my tastes have changed as I’ve grown. I’m sick of replacing solar string lights bought from Tesco or Waitrose every year. I’m tired of constantly buying AA batteries for the short cute fairy lights for the bedroom. I only like fairy lights that have a mains plug and years of staying power.

My favourite fairy lights used to be Twinkly. They are incredibly good quality and have an app where you can choose from a small selection of colour themes. Indoors they’re sturdy (except the dots, these, for some reason break the Twinkly mould and we do not recommend) and they light up a room perfectly. However, Twinkly prices have sky rocketed lately, with Next selling the ones I love for £700 plus. While they may be worth it, for this I would expect a lifetime guarantee, and a personalised song and dance every time I switched them on. It’s just a little too much.

Enter Philips Hue, now I’ve bought Philips Hue products before and the children have had fun adjusting the colour of the bulbs with their APP. I haven’t really got involved. Until now.

I set to work setting up the Wall Washer and the Festavia lights for an all girls party for my daughter’s 21st. The Festavia would be used outside, as they’re waterproof, to light up the BBQ area while the wall washer would be used in the snug to make the relaxing movie, at the end of the night, an all immersive experience.

I was astounded by how easy they were to set up. In minutes I’d completely changed the entire look of the inside and outside of the house. This is some magic and as you can see, even on the basic white mode these lights look amazing.

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The Wall Washer Lights from Philips Hue

Now I was skeptical about the wall washer lights. The lights that mirror what’s on TV and colour your wall as a complimentary colour to enhance your viewing experience. I already enjoy a good movie on our Roku TV, I didn’t think an extra bit of colour would make a lot of difference. How wrong I was. This is the closest you’ll ever come to having a full home cinema in your own home. It may have been the choice of film, The Babadook, (well recommended, has the guy from Jeeper’s Creepers in it and they send a nod to that film also), a horror, made it so much more atmospheric, so scary, so immersive. My eyes couldn’t escape the journey the director took us on and with the extra colour it felt as if our whole home had entered the real life set of the film. These are a must have for Christmas movie watching this year, for Spring Rom Coms, Summer action movies and Autumn horror. Make sure you have them set up when the last season of Stranger Things hits Netflix in November. (Sneak peek at Stranger Things Season 6 coming soon).

I can’t wait to use the Wall Washer Play when playing Life is Strange this autumn.

The Festavia Lights Review

The Festavia lights created wonder in the backyard before I’d even downloaded the APP. On downloading I realised there are so many colour gradients, each separated into their own category from relaxing to energetic, Las Vegas to Morrocco, Spring to Winter Nights and so many in between. There are even Grand Prix colours. The lights are also bright enough to allow me to see faces in the yard at night without turning on the big outdoor lights. As dusk fell softly, the evening turned romantic as the lights allowed us to chat and relax well into the summer night. Imagine these at Christmas? On the tree, around the room, outdoors, with you controlling the colours from anywhere in your home.

Shortly after this was a trip to Reading Festival. On returning my daughter needed some serious sleep. She has a habit of falling asleep with her light on and hates to sleep in a pitch black room. I remembered that her bedside light is a Philips Hue. I connected it to the APP alongside the wall washer and Festavia and, from my own bedroom, dimmed her light to a very soft pink as she fell asleep.

I’m now completely hooked and want every room in the house to benefit from Philips Hue lighting. I also connected the Festavia to Alexa (who calls them First Lights strangely, as does Siri) and have fun turning them on and off with my voice (I know, I need a life).

In summary, I’m very impressed with these two lights, they are incredible, if not life changing then certainly mood changing, house changing, atmosphere changing. Sorry Twinkly, I’ve found a great alternative, for a fraction of the price and with a lot more colour choice!