The Philips Hue app can now customize lighting scenes to fit your room layout

• Your Philips Hue lights get a new feature called Hue SpatialAware
• It applies scenes differently depending on the location of lights in a room
• A long-awaited update also arrives for the Philips Hue Bridge Pro

Your Philips Hue lights are getting an upgrade that will make your rooms look much more cohesive. It’s called Hue SpatialAware and will apply lighting scenes differently depending on where the smart lights are located in your room, giving a more natural effect.

Lighting scenes are themed color palettes that you can apply to all the lights in a particular room or area. They’re great for creating ambiance, but until now, each color in the scene could be applied to any bulb or fixture, regardless of its location. The result might be somewhat confusing, as you can see on the left side of the images above and below.

That’s about to change, as you can now use your phone’s camera to scan your room and record the location of each light. Hue SpatialAware will then apply the colors in the chosen scene in a logical way. For example, the lights on one side of the room might have a bright, warm glow to represent a sunset, while those on the other side are dimmer. You may also find that the lights at the top of your room are brighter than those at the bottom, simulating a sunny sky.

Hue SpatialAware is currently available for about half of the remastered scenes in the Hue app’s Scene Gallery and is most effective with nature-inspired palettes. It requires Philips Hue Bridge Pro, which went on sale in September last year, and SpatialAware will be available early this year.

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