@Carterfam,

In general, you will not be able to do what you are looking for without a customer controller / installation. With RGBIC, each light can operate independently and has its own microcontroller on the LED. You will always have much better luck using the standardized RGB connections in setups like yours.

RGBIC is mainly used in areas where there you are looking to add lighting effects of multiple colors or animations. RGB strips will use the same color and light setting across all the lights connected.

Please do be aware that the use of the cut strip is not officially supported by TP-Link, so we cant provide support for the setup, but you can take a look around the forums to see how others have done so in the past.

The shades of white and the CRI cant be determined by a statistic for RGB bulbs because of the different color ranges/shades of white that can be used to give the room the most natural appearance.