Key Takeaways
- Nanoleaf Skylights offer a smart and modular alternative to traditional ceiling lights, with the ability to daisy chain up to 100 panels and provide up to 1400 lumens of white light.
- The color output is not as impressive, and there are hotspots around the edges due to the LED arrangement.
- The price is high, starting at $250 for a three-panel starter kit, limiting design options, but the range of software features like desktop mirror and Razer Chroma integration may be appealing for immersive gaming.
The Nanoleaf Skylights have been a long time in the making, first previewed over a year ago at CES in January 2023. They bring modular and smart lighting concept to the traditionally boring world of ceiling lights. Each panel measures 30cm square, and can output an enormous 1400 lumens of white light. With innovative smart features like screen mirror, Razer chroma, and music sync, the Nanoleaf skylights could be just what you've been waiting for. But while you can daisy chain up to 100 panels, at $250 for a 3-panel starter kit and $70 for each additional panel, the cost is prohibitively expensive for all but those with the deepest of pockets.
Nanoleaf Skylight
7/ 10The Nanoleaf Skylight offers a compelling, smart, and modular alternative to traditional ceiling lights, allowing you to daisy chain up to 100 panels—each providing up to 1400 lumens of white light. The color output is less impressive though, and the LED arrangement leads to hotspots around the edges. It's a pricey option at $250 for only three panels, which offers limited design options, but the range of software features, such as desktop mirror or Razer Chroma integration for immersive gaming, might clinch it for you.
Brand Nanoleaf Integrations Wi-Fi (Google, Alexa, Apple supported) Hub Required No Music Reactive Yes Multicolor Capable Yes (each panel produces a single color) Color Composition RGBCW Number of Panels 3 in the basic kit ($250); expandable to 100 Voltage 110~240V (must be wired to ceiling AC) Brightness 1400 lumens of white per panel Pros- Great white output
- Modular design of up to 100 panels for large spaces
- Desktop Mirror mode and Razer Chroma integration for immersive media and gaming
- Some hotspots around the edges
- Requires AC wiring and lots of holes in the ceiling
Setup and Installation: Set Aside a Few Hours
Inside the box you'll find three panels (one of which is the main controller and power entry point); a selection of screws, washers, and drywall or plaster anchors, and two short data cables. You should start by removing the frosted plastic cover on each panel, which is easier said than done and requires pushing a flathead screwdriver into the gap in a way that makes you think you'll probably break it. Be very careful with these—any scratches are going to be painfully obvious once a light is shining through them.
Once off, unscrew the circuit cover from the center of each panel, revealing the easy push-clip that holds the wires in. At this point, you should also be able to identify the main controller panel, which features a rectangular block and no trailing power lead. This will be the first one you fit and connect to the power cable from your ceiling. The other extension panels then plug into that (or the panel next to them, depending on the layout you chose).
Installation requires a lot of holes—four per panel. The quick install guide has a printing error—it seems to indicate you don't need to drill holes for the drywall anchors (you do, same as the plaster plugs, 6mm), and that you don't need screws (you do, obviously).
One small point is that the panels sit completely flush with the ceiling and feature only a small entry point for the cable. If you have a bundle of excess wiring, there's no cavity in the Skylight panel for it to hide in. My house was built around 170 years ago, so the wiring isn’t exactly up to code, and I needed to cut a larger hole to stuff the excess up into the ceiling.
While mounting the panels to the ceiling is tedious but easy, the wiring needs a little thought. One panel acts as the main control point that connects to your ceiling light power; each expansion panel then wires back into that panel, or the previous expansion panel.
If you look closely at the panels, you’ll see lines indicating where the cabling is supposed to run. However, I found the cables were too long to follow those paths, and ending up having to route them around and back through other clips. Thankfully, there are lots of clips to use, but this could get tricky if you were to plaster your entire ceiling, with each panel wired to four others!
There are two sets of cables that need to be plugged in between each panel: one to carry power and one to carry a data signal. The data signal cable is very small and has jumper-style connectors that push in easily in one direction only. The power cable is color-coded too, and you need only push the connector block down and feed the cable in.
After plugging each panel in, I’d suggest turning the power back on temporarily to check the wiring; by default, the Skylight panels will illuminate warm white.
Finally, you should replace the plastic covers on the power hubs, then push the frosted white covers back onto the panels.
Once you have a single panel wired in, the rest of the panels can daisy chain off that. Nanoleaf claims you can run up to 100 panels on a single connection—each offering up to 1400 lumens of light each. My superior math skills tell me that means you could, in theory, get up to 140,000 lumens of light, which would, well, completely blind you—and would cost around $7,000.
For reference, an old-school 100W incandescent bulb emits around 1600 lumens; 75W is roughly 1100 lumens. So each Nanoleaf Skylight panel is somewhere between 75W and 100W bulb equivalent.
It took me about two hours total to install three panels. That included marking out and drilling holes, screwing in drywall anchors, screwing the panels in, routing with the wires, and electrocuting myself on the old lighting circuit (just a little, I'm fine!) If you're not confident wiring these in, it would, of course, be wise to get an actual electrician in.
CloseOnce the physical installation is complete (and the light is powered on), download and run the Nanoleaf app, then click Add Device from the top right. It should locate automatically over Bluetooth, but you'll need to scan the QR code on the Quick Start Guide to complete the setup. Alternatively, the code is printed inside the Skylight controller fixture—but I was unable to scan that due to faded printing. Keep the QR code safe; the Skylight will be useless without it. During setup, you'll also confirm the layout and set the default power-on state.
Colors and Light Quality: Superb Whites, but Some Hotspots
Unlike a lot of RGB-only color fixtures, which mix white from a combination of the three colors, the Nanoleaf Skylights include cool white and warm white LEDs (sometimes called RGBCW), enabling them to achieve a temperature range of 2700-6500K—and that headline 1400 lumens maximum brightness, which is only possible in combination white mode.
Pure RGB colors, however, will not be nearly as bright. I measured white output at 1270 lux one meter from the light (note: lux is not the same as lumens, and isn't directly convertible). RGB colors measured closer to 110 to 200 lux, depending on the hue. So I'd estimate the color brightness to be around 1/10th of the stated pure white modes. This isn’t unusual, but if you want to bathe your room in bright colors, you’ll need more than the starter set. In my 4x5m office, the included three panels feel more than enough when it comes to a general cool or warm white room light, but not enough for color, and not enough to replace a desk lamp for technical drawing (unless your desk was directly beneath the panels).
Despite the presence of a frosted plastic diffusion panel, you'll still find hotspots around the edges with a darker patch in the center. This results from having LEDs around the edge only, with the power circuitry in the center. From some angles this is more obvious than others, and most of the time you won't notice it unless you go looking for it. If anything the hotspots are less noticeable than I would have predicted given the LED layout; the frosted panels do a good job of mitigating it (just not completely).
Another minor point is that the panels are highly reflective. In the image above, you can even see the games on my shelf. This image was shot on a rare sunny day; while the emitted color light isn't bright enough to make any difference to the room, you can see the panel colors are still highly visible thanks to those diffusion covers.
Designing Your Layout: Not as Impressive as Feature Lighting
While you could make an impressive and unique smart lighting feature of your wall with the original Nanoleaf Light Panels for $250 or less, you should temper your expectations when it comes to doing the same on your ceiling. Each expansion panel costs around $70; the starter kit of three panels for $250 is higher since it includes the controller module and power connection block. Of course, you can save a little if you purchase a 6 or 12-panel starter kit instead.
At 30cm square and outputting up 1400 lumens of white light, the Skylight isn't really comparable to the smaller and dimmer smart wall lights. But the designs will be a lot more limited, especially if you've only got the three-panel starter kit as reviewed here. You could have a corner, a line, or a very blocky pyramid—you can also offset each one by half a panel. So don't expect much variety.
Unlike some smart lighting, which can achieve a gradient across each panel fixture (the Govee Glide Hexa Pro has three lighting segments per panel; others offer a fully continuous gradient), each Nanoleaf Skylight can only be a single color at any one time. This isn't a dealbreaker by any means; some may even prefer the more blocky aesthetic, but it's something to bear in mind. In the starter set, you will only ever have three "pixels" to design with.
If you're using these to emulate an actual skylight window effect (which is a fantastic use case for them, I think), to combat seasonal affective disorder or to deal with a very dingy basement, you'll probably want at least one expansion to make a traditional 2x2 window pane; better still, get a 6-pack for a 2x3 design.
Software Experience: Smartphone and Desktop Apps
You have a couple of options to control your Nanoleaf Skylight beyond the initial setup.
The first and simplest is to use one of the supported smart home assistants: Alexa, Google, or Apple Homekit. I use Apple exclusively for my smart home, and I found the Skylight was very responsive and reliable there, which can't be said for all smart lights. However, you're limited to single colors or white from the quick control. You'll find the full list of scenes from the Nanoleaf app have been exported to your scenes list as well, so you can quickly initiate a music reactive or dynamic mode, as well as use them within Automations/Shortcuts, or start them with a Siri voice command.
The Nanoleaf smartphone app is less intuitive, but you'll soon get the hang of it. Click on the Skylight icon, then you can choose from Basic (for single colors), Scenes (dynamic and music reactive), and Magic Scene. The Magic Scene feature is the most disappointing. You type in a word or phrase, and the app comes up with some color choices. The colors it comes up seem to be completely unrelated to the word you type in though, so I'm not really sure what sort of algorithm this is using. For instance, the word "burning" offered a dark purple and orange concoction. I would really love to see some actual smart lighting patterns AI being put to use here to generate dynamic scenes.
CloseYou'll also find a separate Discover tab, which is where you can browse the library of animations and scenes. In addition, you can create your own custom scenes, and after a short period of experimenting with timings, I was confidently able to create some for gaming sessions, such as Lightning (mostly dark blue but with random flashes of white), or Alarm (a quick red flash down the line of panels to emulate a rotating security alarm). Compared to the Govee app, the Nanoleaf scene creator seems a lot more user-friendly.
Further, Nanoleaf offers a desktop app. Sign in to your Nanoleaf cloud account to sync up your devices from the smartphone app. The desktop app then offers almost an identical set of features as the smartphone, with one very cool addition: Desktop Mirror.
In this mode, your Skylight will reflect your screen content. This can increase immersion when watching movies or gaming, but as a ceiling light, the effect is less impressive than a true screen Ambilight, such as the Govee AI Gaming Syncbox. If you're running the Windows version of the Nanoleaf desktop app for your gaming PC, you'll appreciate the Razer Chroma integration as well to pair with your other Razer accessories.
Should You Buy the Nanoleaf Skylight?
If you're primarily after color effect lighting to enhance your gaming or entertainment space, I wouldn't bother with the Skylights. You can get significantly brighter color effects with LED strips such as the Govee Matter-compatible M1 addressable LED strips, at $40 for three meters, or their AI Gaming Sync box for your monitor.
But as a bright, modular, "actual" ceiling light that can also offer full-color control and dynamic, music-reactive modes, the Nanoleaf Skylight excels. You'll find plenty of single-fixture smart ceiling lights at a fraction of the price, but their feature set isn't comparable and they can't be expanded for larger spaces or more brightness. If you can afford to budget $500 for a ceiling light fixture, you absolutely won't find a better smart light than the Nanoleaf Skylight.
Nanoleaf Skylight
7/ 10The Nanoleaf Skylight offers a compelling, smart, and modular alternative to traditional ceiling lights, allowing you to daisy chain up to 100 panels—each providing up to 1400 lumens of white light. The color output is less impressive though, and the LED arrangement leads to hotspots around the edges. It's a pricey option at $250 for only three panels, which offers limited design options, but the range of software features, such as desktop mirror or Razer Chroma integration for immersive gaming, might clinch it for you.
Brand Nanoleaf Integrations Wi-Fi (Google, Alexa, Apple supported) Hub Required No Music Reactive Yes Multicolor Capable Yes (each panel produces a single color) Color Composition RGBCW Number of Panels 3 in the basic kit ($250); expandable to 100 Voltage 110~240V (must be wired to ceiling AC) Brightness 1400 lumens of white per panel $250 at AmazonSee at NanoleafncG1vNJzZmivp6x7rq3KnqysnZ%2Bbe6S7zGilmqafobKisoysorKkmZy1tXnRnq2inadk