Although the album failed to match the commercial impact of its predecessor, The Light of Smiles was moderately successful and received a favorable response from some music critics.

[2] Recording started in Los Angeles during the summer, with Wright using members of his tour band, including keyboardist Peter Reilich and drummer Art Wood, and session musicians David Foster and Jim Keltner,[3] both of whom had contributed to The Dream Weaver.

[4] In early June, Chris Charlesworth of Melody Maker reported that the new album would be "a logical development" of its predecessor and focus solely on sounds generated through keyboard instruments, particularly synthesizers.

[19] Billboard's reviewer recognized The Light of Smiles as an advance on The Dream Weaver, in that "Wright proves himself even more highly developed as a virtuoso of blending ethereal sounds into a brilliantly commercial texture."

"[20] In his review for Rolling Stone, Stephen Holden admired the album for blending "the erotic and the spiritual into an overawed romanticism" with a subtlety that he found lacking in other examples of contemporary "mystical art rock", and for Wright's use of musical virtuosity "as elements of song structure and not as side trips or self-justifying entities".

Marsh grouped it with Wright's next two releases as examples of the artist's overindulgence and propensity for "a spacy, mystical froth of synthesizers and remarkably poor vocalizing".