How to Create a Gaming Setup with Nanoleaf Smart Light Panels

Wall panel lights can instantly transform a dull space into the ultimate gaming paradise. Find out which Nanoleaf lights are worth the investment.

There are few companies that are as influential in the smart lighting world as Nanoleaf. Years ago, the growing popularity of multicolored smart light bulbs quickly led to the emergence of more elaborate lighting fixtures. As popular game streamers began to adorn their rooms with wall panel lights, Nanoleaf Aurora lights were all the rage. The manufacturer's product line has only expanded since with smart lights that not only provide illumination but match the decor of any gaming room perfectly. Recently, integrations with apps like Razer Synapse have made gaming more immersive and Nanoleaf panels even more desirable.

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With a growing number of choices for smart lighting, it's often difficult to know where to begin. If looking to fill a blank space near a gaming desk, Nanoleaf has all potential solutions covered with wall panels in a variety of shapes and sizes. If confused about which lights are the best choice for your room, the following is a breakdown of what each wall panel could bring to a gaming setup.

The Nanoleaf Lines Smarter Kit includes 9 LED light bars which can be configured in a variety of different patterns and shapes. The Lines lights easily affix to most walls with the included mounts and project stunning 16+ million color backlit effects onto surfaces. Nanoleaf Lines work with most smart home systems like Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Apple Home, as well as Razer Chroma.

Nanoleaf Lines are a great way to decorate walls behind or adjacent to a gaming desk. The product's name is somewhat deceiving, since with Lines, gamers can assemble many different designs with the light bars besides thin strips. Even connecting at 60-degree angles, the range of possible patterns is extensive, and as usual, Nanoleaf guides users on how to construct the perfect creation for their wall space. Using the Nanoleaf mobile app and phone camera, buyers can even visualize what their design will look like before affixing any lights to their walls.

Unlike other Nanoleaf panels like the Shapes and Canvas lights, Lines operates using backlit lighting effects. The front surface of the light bars does not illuminate, but instead, the reverse side of the lights casts a bright vivid glow on surfaces. The overall look is very similar to LED strips shining on the back of monitors like with the Govee AI Sync Box Kit, but the Lines function as more of a work of art. As with LED light strips, Nanoleaf Lines affix on walls using a series of double-sided tape on the back of connecting joints.

Nanoleaf offers plenty of ready-made scenes in its mobile and desktop apps that showcase the 2 lighting zones in each light bar. Gamers can also create their own effects and share them with a thriving Nanoleaf community. There are scenes designed to react to music and sounds, and through the desktop app, screen mirroring functionality is possible.

Lines works with virtually all the popular smart home ecosystems such as Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Apple Home. Besides voice commands to turn the lights on or off or change scenes, gamers will appreciate the Lights' compatibility with Razer Chroma, which allows them to sync with RGB-enabled keyboards, mice, and headsets.

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The standard Nanoleaf Lines Smarter kit includes 9 light sections, with expansion packs available including the Squared Kit which allows connecting additional lights at 90-degree angles. The cost per light is considerable regardless of what kit you may purchase. However, the reliability, build quality, and simple connectivity to smart home systems makes Lines the best Nanoleaf lights.

For more information on these premium wall panel lights, check out our review of the Nanoleaf Lines.

Nanoleaf offers a flexible solution to RGB home decor lighting with its Shapes wall lights. Using Connect+ technology, shapes can be interconnected using triangles, mini triangles, and hexagon panels for a completely customizable design. Shapes can sync with moving images on PC monitors, using the Nanoleaf app. Host a concert at home with Shapes lights reacting to pulsating music. Nanoleaf lights are easily mounted on smooth surfaces with included double-sided mounting tape.

If a gamer is after more of a traditional wall panel light look, Nanoleaf Shapes can instantly brighten up dull-looking walls. Shapes are available in several different varieties including Hexagons, Triangles, and Mini-Triangles. Thanks to Nanoleaf's Connect+ technology, the different shapes can work together to form some fairly complicated designs. This is where Nanoleaf's Layout Assistant in their mobile app and website really comes through, guiding users each step of the way as to possible configurations.

Once users decide on a design, they must ensure that the provided plastic linkers are in the correct orientation. These strips which allow the various shapes to communicate with each seem flimsy but are adequate once the lights are installed securely on walls with double-sided tape. As with most light strips and wall panels, buyers will find that the adhesive material doesn't work as well on rough-textured surfaces, but purchasing a wall mount kit with screws is an option.

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Unlike Nanoleaf Lines, the front surface of the Shapes lights is where the powerful lighting effects emanate from. There is a white border around the lights or a black frame with the limited edition Black Triangles, but the amount of surface area on the lights is still impressive. Another advantage of Nanoleaf Shapes is the fact that its panels are responsive to touch gestures. Users can make physical contact with the lights in order to turn them on or off or switch scenes. While this functionality is not the most practical especially if the Shapes lights aren't in an accessible location, it's a futuristic effect that will impress friends and family.

In addition to Nanoleaf's usual functionality with other Google Home and Amazon Alexa smart devices, the Nanoleaf mobile app offers some additional useful features. Scheduling enables owners of the Shapes lights to power the device on and off at specific times or activate scenes appropriate for productive morning activities or relaxing evenings. The Shapes are another expensive investment, but the variety of bright and vivid scenes possible with the lights causes few regrets among buyers.

Nanoleaf Elements addresses the needs of buyers looking for smart lights that resemble luxurious home decor. The Elements panels have a textured wood grain veneer that fits in with many living spaces. Providing either warm or cool white colors, the Elements produces the ideal mood lighting to match any activity or time of day. Elements offer the same connectivity as other Nanoleaf smart lights, with integration into Google, Amazon Alexa, and Apple Home.

The sad fact is that most LED lights and panels from companies like Govee don't exactly blend into typical home decor when not on. Even with white plastic lights on white walls, they tend to stick out like a sore thumb with the dangling power cord not helping matters. Nanoleaf Elements and its rustic wood texture seek to better match the aesthetic qualities of homes and gaming rooms. Wood-colored gaming desks remain popular, so placing Elements lights above furniture has obvious appeal.

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Since 16+ million colors would look rather odd with brownish panels, the effects with Elements are limited to soft or warm white lighting. That's not to say that the effects with Elements are dull since Nanoleaf includes in its apps many scenes that take advantage of this more subtle lighting. Like other Nanoleaf products, the Elements integrate seamlessly into popular smart home systems and are controllable with voice commands.

The Elements lights combine some functionality of other Nanoleaf panels into one device. These panels provide both a backlit glow on their reverse side and also sports illumination on their front surfaces. Like with Nanoleaf Shapes and Canvas lights, the Elements are touch-responsive, even enabling gamers to play games like PacMan and Whac-a-Mole.

Another interesting capability of Elements and other Nanoleaf lights is their ability to act as a Thread router. Thread-compatible smart home devices form an ever-growing mesh network that has numerous advantages compared to Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connections. With improved range and more instant responses to commands, Elements can use this new technology to control and interact with an extensive number of popular light bulbs, LED strips, and panels.

The Nanoleaf Elements lights are particularly costly, most likely because of the dual-sided lighting and wood panel design. Even so, they present a welcome change to the white exterior of most smart lights and are the ideal Nanoleaf lights to add to existing decor.

Nanoleaf Canvas revolutionized smart wall panel lighting with illuminated squares that are simple to affix to walls. Canvas lights feature an internal Rhythm module that reacts to music with a pulsating light show. The Canvas lights are touch-sensitive with on-panel controls to turn the device on or off or change scenes. Compatible with the most popular smart home systems, Canvas lights are ready to become the most dynamic edition yet to your home lighting.

While not the first Nanoleaf wall panel lights to hit the marketplace, released in late 2018, the Canvas lights made some significant improvements over the original Nanoleaf Aurora panels. If arranging triangles or hexagons near a gaming desk seems too complicated, nothing is easier to stack together than a bunch of squares. Canvas lights don't work with the other wall panels Nanoleaf sells, but they do have some qualities that make them worthy of consideration.

Nanoleaf Canvas lights feature edge-to-edge lighting, meaning that the entire front surface area illuminates with colored lighting effects. Other wall panels like Nanoleaf Shapes have a border around the edges which takes away from potential lighting. The Canvas lights also make use of physical controls on one of the squares itself, instead of an external control box. The buttons on the control square, which are typically placed toward the bottom of a design, use the same touch-sensitive technology as the rest of the lights.

Since the squares are fairly large at 6 inches long on each side, it's a bit disappointing that there is only one lighting zone per individual panel. On the other hand, having a design full of different colored squares still creates an impressive lighting display.

Gamers will also appreciate the Razer Chroma support for the Canvas, as during supported games the panels will sync with the same RGB lighting effects as on Razer mice and keyboards. Although Shapes and Lines are more recent additions to the manufacturer's lineup, the Canvas squares remain the easiest Nanoleaf panels to plaster a large area with borderless lighting.

The Nanoleaf Lines Squared Smarter Kit contains 4 light bars that connect at 90-degree angles. Users can form patterns with the 4 lights or add them to existing designs made with the Lines 60-degree light kits. Vivid backlit effects can serve as ambient lighting, mirror content on TVs and monitors, or pulsate to music and sounds.

As it turns out, Canvas lights aren't the only squares in the Nanoleaf product lineup. However, despite their name, Nanoleaf Lines Squared are actually 4 straight light bars that can be arranged in a number of different patterns. The key difference between the Squared Kit and the conventional Nanoleaf Lines is that these light bars attach at 90-degrees, as opposed to 60-degree intervals. Although the two different lights are combinable into some elaborate designs, the Squared lights can also function independently. For gamers who have already spent most of their funds on PC components and peripherals, these straight-light bars are a more affordable way to add some backlit lighting in a gaming room.

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The Nanoleaf Squared Smarter Kit is ideal for placement on walls near affordable gaming monitors. If it's not possible to position a monitor close enough to a wall for LED strips to provide an adequate backlit effect, the Nanoleaf light bars are a great alternative. Although the overall presentation is limited somewhat by the modest amount of lights, the Lines are easily expandable in the future as a budget allows. Until then, the Squared lights are the best Nanoleaf lights to enter the world of decorative smart lighting.

To fill a room full of Nanoleaf lights requires a fairly substantial financial investment. However, the modular nature of most of their wall panels means that a gaming room can constantly evolve as more lights are added. Nanoleaf Lines allow for a maximum of 18 interconnected bars using a single power supply and controller. Similarly, Nanoleaf Shapes are even more flexible enabling various triangles and hexagons to form your ideal illuminated piece of artwork. Gamers often start a design in the middle of a wall near their desks and expand the pattern over time as available space and budgets change.

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While wall panel lights are the main attraction for Nanoleaf, it's not the only type of smart lighting the company offers. 60-watt Matter Smart Bulbs are available for as little as $20 each and provide essential white or colored lighting to avoid tripping over objects in the dark. Meanwhile, Nanoleaf RGBCW LED light strips sell for $20 per meter, serving as versatile track lighting along floorboards, ceilings, or underneath gaming desks.

From brands like Govee, there are even more affordable options to spruce up boring gaming spaces, including the Neon Rope Lights for Desks. Even so, it's always preferable to have as many smart lights as possible from the same brand. Although systems like Google Home and Amazon Alexa can control most smart lights, Nanoleaf's mobile app unlocks the full potential of their wall panels and LED strips. Because of their history of proven reliability, top-tier build quality, and integration with gaming software, Nanoleaf lights remain the first choice for smart lighting among many gamers.

Nanoleaf is rated to last up to 25,000 hours.

While you could use Nanoleaf to light a room, it probably won't create a bright enough light for most users.

Nanoleaf lights come with hundreds of built in, preset scenes, meaning a WiFi connection, while recommended, is not required.

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An avid gamer since childhood, Adam Corsetti became hooked on video games after using the original Nintendo console. During college, he created a site aggregating gaming review scores and wrote features about the industry. Adam has since witnessed the popularity of video games rise further and become part of mainstream culture. Adam's video game interests include simulation, strategy, and sports titles on PC and consoles, as well as peripherals and hardware. As a seasoned freelance writer, he recently joined the Game Rant team and is excited to share his experiences and insights with readers.