The Philips Hue app can now customize lighting scenes to fit the design of your rooms

• Your Philips Hue lights are getting a new feature called Hue SpatialAware
• Apply scenes differently depending on the location of lights in a room.
• A long-awaited update for Philips Hue Bridge Pro is also coming

Your Philips Hue lights are getting an update that will make your rooms look much more cohesive. It’s called Hue SpatialAware and it will apply lighting scenes differently depending on the location of the smart lights within your room, resulting in a more natural-looking 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 setting the mood, but until now every color in the scene could be applied to any light bulb or fixture, regardless of its location. The result could be somewhat confusing, as you can see on the left side of the images above and below.

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