How To Program 2 Zooz Switches In a Virtual 3-Way With Smart Bulbs

While we developed Zooz switches with an innovative solution to accommodate 3-way installations with simple mechanical switches, you can also use 2 smart switches to control the same light, especially if it's a smart bulb. Remember that the wiring instructions in the manual can only be used in traditional 3-way set-ups so do NOT use them connect 2 or more Zooz switches together. Please follow the wiring instructions here for a virtual 3-way set-up with smart bulbs (click here for instructions featuring regular bulbs).

We recommend using the ZEN71 On/Off switch, ZEN72 Dimmer, ZEN75 Heavy Duty Switch, ZEN30 Double Switch, ZEN32 Scene Controller, or ZEN35 Scene Dimmer in virtual 3-way set-ups with smart bulbs. It's important to remember that smart bulbs can never be dimmed directly by any type of dimmer since this will damage your equipment. You need to put your smart switch in smart bulb mode immediately after you power it on anytime you connect it to smart bulbs. If your hub doesn't give you access to advanced settings, you enable smart bulb mode straight from the switch: hold the lower paddle for 10 seconds until the LED indicator starts blinking, then within 2 seconds, tap the upper paddle 5 times quickly to change this mode.

TIP 1: You will always need to program an automation for each switch or dimmer to trigger your bulb using wireless commands in your smart home system rather than linking the 2 switches together.

TIP 2: Instead of trying to achieve "live dimming" with smart bulbs which is usually challenging due to different wireless technologies involved, we recommend saving your favorite brightness and color settings as scenes or presets and using the buttons on a ZEN32 Scene Controller or ZEN35 Scene Dimmer to program them so you can easily trigger them with a click.

Here are the most common use cases for this scenario:

More functionality. You can now have two scene controllers with 5 programmable buttons to easily access your favorite color and brightness presets for your smart lighting.
The same look and feel for all of your wall switches, making it easier for everyone at the house to use smart controls.
You purchased the ZEN73, ZEN74, ZEN76, or ZEN77 models which cannot be used in a 3-way set-up with smart bulbs with simple on/off switches reliably since these switches will still cut power off to the bulbs even if the smart switch is in the smart bulb mode. But if you want to keep a toggle style switch and use it with smart bulbs, installing 2 x ZEN73 switches in a virtual 3-way should generally work as well.

Please click here for wiring instructions of your virtual 3-way set-up.

Once the switches are wired, you'll be able to control your lights from the primary switch or dimmer; however, please do not try to dim the light until the switch is included to your hub and put into smart bulb mode. Dimming a smart bulb electrically can damage the switch. The remote switch/dimmer (the one that only has line, neutral, and ground in) will need to be included to your hub and programmed to control the main device via Z-Wave as well.

You can program the virtual 3-way for smart bulbs in 3 different methods:

Central Scene: This is the recommended method for a virtual 3-way with smart bulbs. The only limitation (Recommended unless you are dimming and have SmartThings)
Smart Rules:
Direct Association: only applicable if you have Z-Wave smart bulbs. There are currently no Z-Wave bulbs on the market, so this option is only viable if you have legacy Z-Wave smart bulbs.

Central Scene

This option uses Z-Wave’s built-in command structure. When you tap, double-tap, or hold a switch button, the switch sends a Central Scene notification directly to the hub and can be used to control any smart bulb that's controllable from your hub (Zigbee smart bulbs, Wi-Fi smart bulbs, etc.), The hub interprets these commands and executes the linked automations, such as turning another switch on or dimming a light. Central Scene programming happens at the protocol level—it’s part of the Z-Wave standard—and doesn’t require you to manually build multiple automations for each possible action. However, in a virtual 3-way the switches themselves don’t stay perfectly synchronized because the LED indicators rely on local device states, not hub commands. Central scene uses the status reported by each switch.

They communicate through the hub which needs to support central scene commands, including "start level change" and "stop level change" commands for remote dimming if you elect to try and dim your smart bulbs.

Important Notes

If you are looking to dim via scene control, please note that virtual/wireless dimming where you press the paddles and it sends a signal to the other dimmer to start changing brightness can usually be accomplished by "held" and "released" button triggers and "start level change" / "stop level change" on the action side on most hubs. Unfortunately, SmartThings doesn't currently support the action part of this rule so this method cannot be used if you need dimming functionality.
This type of communication between the devices requires that your hub is active and operational.
The paddle on your switch will now be treated like a button on a remote control that's pressed or held - it will send only this information to the hub and should not be treated as an additional on/off device with its own status.
After you add the switch to the hub, you need to go to the advanced settings to enable scene control on your device (it's disabled by default). If you don't change the setting first, your programming won't work.

Here are detailed Virtual 3-Way Central Scene programming instructions for the most popular hubs:

Z-Box Hub
Home Assistant
HomeSeer
Hubitat
SmartThings (no support for remote dimming with this method)

Smart Rules

In most interfaces, this is simply called scenes / automations / routines. This is a higher-level automation feature managed entirely by the hub. Instead of using Central Scene commands, you manually define a set of actions for each event—turn this device on, set that one to 50%, etc. To make two switches and a smart bulb behave like a 3-way, you’d typically need six separate scenes: one for turning on from switch A, one for turning off from A, one for turning on from B, one for turning off from B, one for turning on from the smart bulb, and one for turning off from the smart bulbs. While this keeps both switches and the smart bulb synchronized, it generates more Z-Wave traffic and adds complexity, since every state change must be processed by the hub and distributed to all devices involved.

If your hub support Central Scene, this is recommended before resorting to Smart Rules. The only benefit to Smart Rules over Central Scene would be synchronized LED indicators. With Central Scene, the LED indicators will not be in sync because the LED indicators rely on local device states, not hub commands. Smart Rules would keep the LED indicators in sync, but cause more Z-Wave traffic.

Here is an example of the 6 rules you would need to create to sync the switches to your bulbs:

If switch A is turned on, then turn smart bulb(s) on.
If switch A is turned off, then turn smart bulb(s) off.
If switch B is turned on, then turn smart bulb(s) on.
If switch B is turned off, then turn smart bulb(s) off.
Is smart bulbs are on, then turn switches A and B on.
Is smart bulbs are off, then turn switches A and B off.

Direct Association

With direct association, each of the switches associates with the bulb and communicates outside of the hub. This is only applicable if you have Z-Wave smart bulbs. There are currently no Z-Wave bulbs on the market today, so this option is only viable if you have legacy Z-Wave smart bulbs.

Requirements

Your hub must support direct association
Both switches and the smart bulb must be included to the hub with the exact same level of security (S2A, S2U, no security, etc.)

We recommend that you use the ZEN71 On/Off switch, ZEN72 Dimmer, ZEN75 Heavy Duty Switch, ZEN30 Double Switch, ZEN32 Scene Controller, or ZEN35 Scene Dimmer models with the latest firmware for this scenario and program them according to the instructions below for the best experience:

Main dimmer or on/off switch (connected to load): enable smart bulb mode (this ensures that power is not cut to your smart bulbs when the paddle is pressed physically or the switch is triggered via the hub).
Remote dimmers or on/off switch (not directly wired to the load): no changes in settings (as long as you are on the latest firmware).
- If you have an earlier firmware, you will need to set Parameter 7 to value 11 (ONLY if your firmware is earlier than 3.30; this will break the direct association if used on firmware 3.30 or later.

Programming

On/Off Switches: Set the association for Group 2 only, adding the device ID's for the smart bulbs in Group 2 for each switch. So you need to add your smart bulb ID (or smart bulb ID's if you're controlling multiple Z-Wave bulbs) to Group 2 on each Zooz switch.

Dimmers: Set direct association for Group 3 only, adding the device ID's for the smart bulbs in the group. So you need to add your smart bulb ID (or smart bulb ID's if you're controlling multiple Z-Wave bulbs) to Group 3 on each Zooz dimmer.

IMPORTANT: The dimmers can then only be used from the paddles (you need to hide them in your interface not to trigger it via Z-Wave) while any Z-Wave or wireless control of the light needs to happen from the smart bulb device. This will ensure all devices stay in sync at all times.

SmartThings users: Group 2 can be programmed in the Basic Set Assoc. Device Network ID setting, and Group 3 can be programmed in the Multilevel Set Assoc Device Net ID setting.

We've included standard Direct Association programming instructions for the most popular Z-Wave hubs below:

If you have any questions about programming your virtual 3-way installation with smart bulbs, please reach out to our customer service team and we'll be happy to assist you.