ESPHome lets makers choose which light settings return after a restart: keep a saved value or supply a replacement for each property. Brightness and colour can have separate choices, and the on-or-off state can also be inverted. The new restore_state setting replaces a fixed menu of combinations.
A light configured to start on, with no explicit restoration setting, also starts on as requested instead of being silently overridden to off. Existing configurations that explicitly set restore_mode keep their behavior. Clyde Stubbs also makes an initial colour selection choose a compatible colour mode instead of falling back to full-brightness white.