LIFX Clean Review: Does It Actually Work?
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Smart bulb maker LIFX has always produced high quality products renowned for bright, rich colors and no hub. In an increasingly crowded smart light market they’ve begun to differentiate themselves through some unique products such as the LIFX Nightvision, and the more recent LIFX Clean.
The LIFX Clean capitalizes on a less known quality of LED lights to produce what is known as HEV, or High Energy Violet, light. HEV has been shown to be an effective anti-bacterial in a similar way to ultraviolet light, but without the inherent risk to humans or animals from UV exposure. This property of HEV is starting to become recognized as a useful sanitzing tool, and is being used in some hospitals and other commercial installations.
It’s still a nascent market, but there are now commercial lighting products making use of this for these kinds of customers, so it makes sense that we can do the same at home. The catch here is that for HEV to work, it needs long exposure times, and high energy output. The question I had was “Has LIFX pulled this off in a normal light bulb?”.
To answer this, I went digging through the research, LIFX’s own lab tests, and performed some of my own (admittedly rudimentary) bacterial testing to see how effective the LIFX Clean is in a normal home environment. I’ll cover all of these and some additional notes on safety, but let’s take a quick look at the product itself before we dive into that.
LIFX Clean Overview
LIFX Clean
Key Features:
• Supports HomeKit, Alexa, Google, SmartThings
• Edison screw or bayonet cap
• Bright 1200 lumens
• Full color bulb
• HEV Clean function
• Wi-Fi - no hub
✔ Great build quality and support
✔ Great brightness and color, in addition to antibacterial mode
✘ Limited anti-microbial use cases
✘
Being a smart bulb, there’s not a whole lot to say about the unboxing experience. The bulb itself follows the distinctive LIFX style, with a flattened diffuser on the end of a standard sized cylindrical body. You can get the bulb in both E26/27 Edison Screw or B22 Bayonet cap variants, depending on your region and installation is as simple as screwing it into your light socket and adding it to the LIFX app.
One notable addition in the box is a small test card which is supposed to demonstrate the cleaning effect. It’s telling that the card recommends placing it ‘less than one foot’ from the bulb. The only other thing in the box is a small quick start leaflet, which also has the HomeKit pairing code for the bulb.
Adding the bulb to the LIFX app is fairly straightforward. Once it’s installed in the socket and turned on, I just had to use the Add function in the LIFX app to find the bulb. As I have LIFX paired with HomeKit this also prompted me to scan the QR code. The first time through this was not successful and timed out, although the bulb did complete setup in the LIFX app and my Echo Show politely chimed in that a new device was found and was available to use with Alexa. To finish the HomeKit setup I simply initiated the pairing again from the bulb settings in the LIFX app, which completed successfully the second time.
Using the LIFX Clean
Once setup is complete you can use the LIFX Clean as a normal bulb in your smart home setup, or in the LIFX app. Setting color, brightness, and using it in scenes, routines, schedules and so forth is all as normal. The Clean function must be initiated from the LIFX app, though. Tapping the clean icon next to the bulb asks you for a duration to run the cleaning cycle for, defaulting to 2 hours. Starting the cycle sets the bulb to a bright blue color, which will revert to a normal white when the cycle is complete.
While the Alexa and HomeKit apps don’t have a way to trigger the cleaning cycle, LIFX also supports Siri Shortcuts. Using a shortcut, you can trigger functions from the LIFX app on your iPhone, and I’ve used this to set up a Siri command that starts a cleaning cycle. Shortcuts are also available on any HomePods you have via the personal requests feature, so if you have this active you can use that new command through your HomePods without having to take out your phone.
A Cleaning cycle running in the LIFX app
LIFX Clean controls in the LIFX App
A Siri Shortcut set up to run the cleaning cycle by voice command
Does HEV Light Actually Kill Bacteria?
What does the research say?
There is quite a bit of published research on the use and effectiveness of HEV light for anti-microbial purposes. Indeed, this is not new information. Danish physician Niels Ryberg Finsen was seeing great success using light to treat skin tuberculosis in 1901, achieving an 83% cure rate over 804 patients. His ‘Finsen’ lamp earned him a Nobel prize in 1903, even though it was later found that his belief that UV was the key to his success proved to be incorrect.
When later studies examined the emissions from the Finsen lamp is was found the type of glass used does not transmit UV (wavelengths below 340nm) and the methylene solution used to absorb heat also blocked the 550-700nm range, leaving only the violet-blue light in between. The absorption of this range of light causes the production of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) in the cell, leading to the breakdown of the bacteria.
The use of blue light for sanitation purposes is of particular interest in combating the rise of antibiotic resistant bacterial strains. A 2019 study explored this using 405nm light at a distance of 15cm from test samples. The experiments observed an 80% reduction in 11 or the 12 strains, making it potentially useful for supplemental bacterial control in hospital rooms and other settings where UV exposure isn’t always practical. Another study in 2022 tested this same wavelength to great effect against three other common bacteria: Streptococcus pneumoniae, Moraxella catarrhalis and Haemophilus influenzae.
Perhaps of more interest to a domestic setting is the effectiveness of blue light on E.coli and Salmonella, common risks in the kitchen. A 2016 study looked at the effectiveness of both 405nm and 464nm light on these bacteria and similarly found them to be highly effective, with kill rates between 75 and 100% depending on dosage.
It’s pretty clear there is now abundant evidence, at least in the lab, that HEV is an effective anti-microbial force, but most tests use 405nm wavelengths specifically, and invariably at relatively short ranges. LIFX doesn’t specify what wavelength they use in the LIFX Clean, only noting in a blog post that HEV is between 405nm and 450nm.
Is it safe?
Many of these studies, along with claims from LIFX, suggest that blue-violet visible light is harmless, making it useful for sterilization of interior occupied spaces where extensive UV exposure would be harmful. Given that the absorption of blue light causes the production of oxidative species in bacteria, wouldn’t this also happen with human cells?
An Iranian meta-study looked at the existing work on this topic to try and get to the bottom of it. Phototherapy has become popular in dermatology, and has been thus supported by research indicating that it’s completely safe. This meta-study found plenty of contradictory evidence that blue light is not safe for skin and can contribute to eye damage as well.
This is down to the well-known link between oxidative stress and skin ageing. That oxidative stress can be induced by the same ROS production that blue light causes in bacteria. The effect is less damaging in human cells as the body has the ability to repair any damage, which bacteria do not, and the presence of antioxidants can also offset these negative effects to some extent. Still, visible light in the lower spectral range, like HEV, has been found to cause similar effects the UV-A, and penetrates deeper than ultraviolet.
Experiments on rats exposed to diffuse blue light exposure has been demonstrated to cause uneven retinal damage to some extent. Now, don’t panic, these tests were fairly intensive. In one study the rats were exposed to high intensity blue light for 6 hours, in another the exposure was continuous for 2-5 days, and these were albino rats to boot. Similarly, tests on skin exposure have been conducted as distances of as low as 1cm from the source.
Nonetheless, with the growing prevalence of LED lights in phones, TVs, light bulbs and camera flashes, the effect of visible light is garnering more research attention. I’ve seen it suggested that 8 hours in front of a LED-based computer monitor can be the equivalent of 20 minutes in the summer sun in terms of aging effects.
All of this comes down to intensity and exposure time. Limiting screen time, using warm white lighting, and reducing your screen brightness can all limit the impact of blue light. We can’t escape blue light entirely though. It is, after all, the primary component of the sunlight that reaches the surface. Given the limited power output of the LIFX Clean, it’s unlikely to have a significant effect on its own.
My own test results
So, the research says HEV is effective as an anti-microbial, and LIFX has had the LIFX Clean specifically tested in the lab. The full lab report is available for anyone who wants to look at it. Essentially this tested the LIFX Clean against two bacterial strains, E. coli and Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), at various distances and exposure durations. All of these were relatively close range with a maximum test distance of about 1.2 meters at 2-, 4-, 8-, and 12-hour durations.
A few takeaways from this are that E. coli is more susceptible than MRSA, duration is very important, and efficacy at more than 80cm was significantly reduced. This is consistent with the research we looked at above, but what about in a real home situation?
To test this I procured some sterile bacterial test kits. My intention was to see if there was a significant reduction in bacterial load before and after using the LIFX Clean. My method was to take a sample from the test surface, run a 6 hour cleaning cycle, and then take another sample from the test surface. The samples were incubated in a cardboard tube for approximately 4 days to ensure adequate culture growth for visual inspection (The test kits require incubation from 2 to 5 days, so this seemed reasonable).
Samples were taken immediately before and after the test cycle, and the room was not entered or interfered with during the test. Before we look at the results, I need to point out some important caveats. This is not a very scientific test because:
a) I don’t know how much bacteria were on the test surface prior to testing, or if it was evenly distributed between the two samples.
b) I don’t know which bacteria were present. This matters because HEV is more effective on some than others.
Ok, so now we’ve established that, I ran two tests, one from a typical ceiling light socket and one from a desk lamp closer range exposure. The first test was at a distance of about 1.7 meters from the test surface, the second was 40cm away to align with the lab test.
At 170cm the results suggest very little effect. The number of cultures before and after are about the same. Disappointing but not unexpected. For the 40cm test I expected much better results. While there is a clear reduction in the average size of the cultures, it’s not as dramatic as I had hoped for. Given these results are not decisive - and remembering that I don’t have a controlled bacterial density on the two samples - I can only conclude that the LIFX Clean did not have a dramatic anti-microbial effect in these scenarios. It would appear that the close-range test was more effective, but that’s not conclusive. The long-range test was clearly ineffective, however.
To compare, the lab test at 40cm and 4 hours saw a 95% reduction in E.coli and an average of 67% against MRSA. My 40cm test showed far less than even the lowest score of 60%. Did I have very HEV resistant bacteria? I don’t know, but research results suggest even then I should have seen better results.
The test kits before use
170cm 6 hour test. Before (left) and After (right)
40cm 6 hour test. Before (left) and After (right)
Do we even need an expensive bulb for HEV?
Something that caught my attention while researching this article was the fact that HEV exposure is a concern from all LED light sources. Given HEV is just a range of light wavelengths, should any smart light be able to do this? Indeed, I noticed the product information on the base of the LIFX Clean bulb actually says ‘LIFX Color’. Maybe they didn’t see the need to change that for such a similar product, maybe they just use the same casing? Or is this indicative that the LIFX Clean is just a software feature with a high price tag?
I wanted to try a comparison with another smart light, even one of LIFX’s, but as LIFX doesn’t tell us what wavelength they are using it would be difficult to do a fair comparison. It did get me looking into trying to match it, though. I thought I might be able to ascertain the color that Clean mode was using by looking at the bulb settings while it was in use. Interestingly, HomeKit and Alexa indicate that it’s on, but don’t show the color being used, and the LIFX app doesn’t add that color to the ‘recently colors’ list under the bulb settings.
This got me looking at wavelength to color code converters such as 405nm.com and one at academo.org. This gets a bit dicey as the representation of light is subject to all sorts of complicated details like the definition of ‘white’ in different color models. Suffice it to say that the converters only provide an approximation. Nonetheless, it became obvious quickly that LIFX is not using 405nm. That wavelength is distinctly purple, and I double-checked this by looking at images of commercial 405nm LED products.
The LIFX Clean in my tests, and the lab report photos, shows a much blue-er hue. Through trial and error, it works out somewhere around 430nm (#3D00FF), which is still HEV by definition. Theoretically, any smart light set to an HSL hue of between 250 and 220 should be pumping out similar HEV as well.
A commercial 405nm LED strip
LIFX Clean in cleaning mode
LIFX Clean in normal mode
The Verdict
Does the LIFX Clean actually deliver on the promise of safe, effort free, anti-bacterial cleaning? It depends.
Both the distance from the bulb and the duration of exposure make a huge difference, in both labs tests and my own amateur experiments. Using one (or many) or these to try and disinfect a whole room is going to be a waste of time and money. The less of power at distances more than a couple of feet from the bulb reduces it’s effectiveness to virtually nothing. At least, it’s likely that the accumulation of bacteria outpaces the destructive effects at that power level.
At close ranges the bulb does seem to work, to some extent. A longer exposure time, like 8 to 12 hours is likely required to make a real difference, so it could be useful in specific situations. If you had pendant lights over a kitchen bench that could be low enough and run all night, this could actually help, especially given the tested efficacy on common food related bacteria like E .coli and salmonella in the research.
Another use case may be in a desk lamp positioned close to a side table where you keep your phone or keys, also run over night. Close proximity to known bacterial hot beds like these items could be useful in reducing your exposure from day to day items. The catch here is that only the surfaces directly exposed to the light will be impacted. You have to do different sides on each cleaning cycle to be really sure. This is easy enough with a phone, not so much with a bunch of keys.
Beyond those use cases there doesn’t appear to be much benefit in paying a 20% premium over a normal LIFX bulb, and there’s no guarantees you’re actually better off even in limited situations. Maybe just stick with the isopropyl alcohol wipes.
