It turns out I’ve been using my Hue lights all wrong

Color-changing lights are a batch of fun, but it tin beryllium difficult to fig retired really to champion usage them successful your home. Most smart lighting companies connection pre-designed scenes to thief you ray your space, but the lights don’t cognize wherever they are physically successful your home, and the effect tin get diluted. Philips Hue has a solution to this problem: SpatialAware.

SpatialAware knows your room’s layout and the placement of your Hue lights, truthful it tin find the champion measurement to administer the scene’s colors and effects crossed them.

It gets the information erstwhile you scan your abstraction pinch your smartphone successful the Hue app. Using your phone’s AR capabilities, the strategy tin create a 3D exemplary of the placement of Hue lights successful your room.

That’s past stored arsenic a representation successful the Hue app, and erstwhile you use 1 of Hue’s recently remastered scenes, it will administer the ray intelligently based connected wherever bulbs and fixtures are.

So, for a sunset scene, for example, the lamps connected 1 broadside of the room will show lukewarm yellowish tones to mimic the mounting sun, while the ceiling lights connected the other broadside will person darker tones and colors.

The institution has reworked astir half of its scenes to beryllium compatible pinch the caller technology, coding each to accommodate to the caller information connected the lights’ placement.

I saw a demo of SpatialAware successful a edifice suite astatine CES this week, and it made maine realise I’ve been utilizing smart lighting incorrect each along.

Held successful a eating room filled pinch Hue ambient lighting products and Hue bulbs successful overhead tin lighting, the demo showed the original scene, past the remastered scene.

As you tin spot successful the video above, the lighting is distributed successful a much polished and integrated measurement successful the remastered version. “That’s because it’s really being done the measurement the lighting designer intended,” says George Yianni, CTO and laminitis of Philips Hue.

The astir noticeable quality is that the colors are much evenly distributed. For example, each the ceiling lights successful the remastered Savannah sunset segment are a soft orangish glow, whereas successful the original, a mates are orangish and a mates soft white, which creates an awkward look.

In the Nightlight scene, the original type has the ceiling lights on, but the remastered 1 turns them each off, “because you don’t want ceiling lights connected successful a nighttime ray scene,” says Yianni.

The caller characteristic is coming successful Spring 2026 and is compatible pinch Hue lighting connected to the Hue Bridge Pro.

Photos and video by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge