I use Phillips Hue lights and WeMo smart outlets. The Hue lights can be expensive, but there are other options out there. A friend of mine uses Lifx bulbs, there are also bulbs by Cree. You can get Hue & Cree at most home improvement stores like Lowes or Home Depot. I've never seen Lifx in retail, but I know you can get them online.
I have lights in the room and I have lights on the cage. The room lights are smart bulbs, and I use them together with the smart outlets. For the pet birds in my office, the room light starts to come on at 7am, and takes 10 minutes to reach full brightness. When that happens, the smart outlet turns on the cage lights. I work from home, so I'm usually in the office and already working when this happens. In the evening, the opposite happens. The cage lights go out, and then sometime later the room light starts to dim. That takes 15 minutes to go dark. I keep them on a solid 12 hours of light each day. I do something similar with the breeders, but they follow sunrise and sunset. The overhead light starts to go on 10 minutes before sunrise. When it is fully bright, the cage lights start to turn on in 2-minute intervals. This prevents them from being startled with all the lights just coming on with no warning. Once the cage lights are on, the overhead light serves no purpose so it turns off. In the evening, the overhead turns back on, and then in 2-minute intervals, the cage lights start to go out. When they are out, the overhead light takes 15 minutes to dim before going dark. Normally this works very well. It's all controlled by my phone and I rarely need to do anything manually now that it's all scheduled.