Twinkly Curtain Review
Bring your home or garden to life with a wall of colour.
Verdict
A wall of fun, the Twinkly Curtain brings 210 individually-controlled lights to any indoor or outdoor space. Bright lighting, fun, dynamic scenes and a great app make these lights a brilliant way to cheer up pretty much any space.
Pros
- Easy to fit
- Excellent colours and brightness
- Works with HomeKit
Cons
- Fiddly to scan
Key Features
- LightA 1.5 x 2.5 blanket of lights, there are 210 LEDs in this set.
- Smart assistant supportWorks with Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit and Google Assistant.
Introduction
Twinkly knows how to do fun with its smart lights. The Twinkly Curtain is no exception: a wall of 210 individually-controllable lights that can go inside or out.
An excellent range of scenes, HomeKit compatibility and strong lighting make this a great choice for inside or out.
Design and features
- 210 individual bulbs
- Large gallery
- Works with HomeKit, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant
A net of LED bulbs, the Twinkly Curtain lights can be used inside or out, draping a window, fence, wall or more in a blanket of lights. Measuring 1.5 x 2.1m and containing 210 LEDs, the Twinkly Curtain covers a large area.
Installation is simple, as the lights can simply be clipped into place where you want them. I installed my lights outside, hanging them over hooks on my fence. All I needed was an outdoor power socket.
As each light is small and the connecting wire transparent, the Twinkly Curtain blends into the background when it’s turned off.
Connection is easy using Bluetooth to discover the lights and add them to the Twinkly app, with the lights then connecting via Wi-Fi. I’ve got good coverage in my garden, so getting Wi-Fi connected wasn’t a problem.
At its most simple, the Twinkly Curtain lights can be controlled via the inline smart controller. This has one button that turns the lights on, with repeated presses cycling through the scenes you’ve applied to the lights, before finally turning the lights off again.
That’s fine if you can’t reach your phone, but there’s more control if you dive into the Twinkly app. First, the lights need to be mapped, which uses your phone’s camera to work out where the lights are in real space. The only minor issue with having these lights outside is that it needs to be dark enough for your camera to pick up the lights, but not too dark. On a long Summer’s evening, getting the right balance is tricky.
Once mapped, the app gives fine control over the lights, including their brightness, an option to set a timer, and a colour-picker to set a solid colour. While a solid colour can be good for ambient lighting, the true fun with Twinkly lights is the dynamic effects.
These vary from fast-moving swashes of colour to gentle shifting ambient hues. There are some more detailed lights, such as the Bat-Signal, although these work better on the Twinkly Squares. Effects can have their colours and transition speeds edited, before they’re applied and saved to the controller.
If you have multiple Curtain lights (or Twinkly lights of a similar type), you can link them in the app to create a group. Groups can then be controlled as one.
As well as app control, the lights work with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Voice control let me turn the lights on and off, set the brightness and pick a solid colour, but I couldn’t select a scene this way.
HomeKit support is available, too, with the lights appearing in the Apple Home app. There’s basic control over the Twinkly Curtain: I could select a colour and brightness, as well as toggling power. I did find HomeKit support useful for linking my lights up to my Philips Hue system.
I’ve got several Hue Outdoor lights, controlled through a Hue Smart Button. I set HomeKit to watch out for a button press, turning on the Twinkly Curtain lights. I then set an Automation to turn off the Twinkly Curtain lights when a specific Hue light turned off. Voila, my Twinkly lights now turn on and off with my Hue lights, although they don’t match the same scene or pattern.
Performance
- Excellent effects
- Very bright lights
What makes Twinkly stand out from the competition is that each of the 210 bulbs is individually controllable, so each can be a different colour and intensity. Turn on a motion scene, for example, and the lights come to life, either with dynamic, shifting patterns or smooth gradient changes.
It’s highly impressive to watch, and gives the fun and excitement of the Twinkly Christmas lights. If you’ve got a dull area that you want to liven up, then there’s nothing better than these lights.
Impressively, the lights are also very bright. Whack them up to full brightness and there’s enough ambient light to see what you’re doing, adding a nice feel and glow to any area.
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Should you buy it?
You want a fun wall of colour: Easy to install and covering a large area, these lights fill a wall or window with colour-changing light.
You want an integrated system: If you want physical controls to synchronise and control multiple outdoor lights, a Hue-based system may be better.
Final Thoughts
Inside or out, the Twinkly Curtain lights are exceptionally powerful. Moving from delicate one-colour lights, to dynamically shifting scenes, these lights can inject a shot of fun to any dull space or change the ambience of any area.
How we test
Unlike other sites, we test every smart home product we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
We test how each product integrates with other smart home systems including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple HomeKit, IFTTT and Samsung SmartThings
We use each smart home product in a real world setting, integrating it into our home.
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FAQs
This set has 210 individually addressable LEDs.
Yes, multiple lights can be grouped to synchronise effects across them.
Full specs
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Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
