philips hue...bespoke lighting for your home

Meet Philips Hue!!  Finally a wireless home lighting system that you can retrofit without calling out the sparky.  So excited about this product.   This is what you can do with Hue - smart control from your phone, control lights away from home, set light schedules, create an ambience, paint with light (yes really), synch with music.  Did I mention I was excited about this product?

Looks pretty easy to install, you need to buy a starter kit with a bridge that must be plugged into your wifi, and some smart bulbs.  Then download the Hue app and control the smart bulbs from the app.  The bridge retails at $89 and colour bulbs from $89 each, but if you want a few lights to turn on when you come home you can probably get away with an initial investment for around $300.  Once you have the base set up installed there are some pretty cool options to play with.




The app allows you to set lighting moods, turning on "moments" they call it.  So you can have relaxed moment, a normal bright light moment, a wake up moment, a party moment.  Sounds like fun and watching reviews it reacts really quickly and is easy to set.  The colour globes can be set to any colour, the blues and reds are really effective.  I like the Bloom light ($99.90) which washes the wall in colour and is small enough to sit on a desk top or credenza, and the Hue Go which is similar to the Bloom but cordless and portable.  Again controlled from your phone and really easy to use.  See the cute video below.

No need to wait for the Vivid festival anymore, you can have your own little festival at your house whenever you want.

And with the Hue Party app you can really throw a party (see video below) with the lights syncing to music, strobe function, candle function, scrolling rainbow lights.  I want to have a party...


I would install it just to be able to set the entrance lights on remotely, or when it gets dark, never like coming home to a dark house.  Useful to make it look like somebody's home when you are away too.   You can set the geo-fencing feature which switches the lights off when you reach a set distance away from home, and switches on when it senses you coming home.  Pretty cool.

And how genius for people who are renting!!!  Because I never rented a house that had decent lights.  You can upgrade the lighting and take it all with you when you leave.

Lighting is very under rated in creating the mood of a home.  I know it is an area of design I would love to do better at our house, and this looks like a good first step.  

Would love to install this at my house!!   Check out Philips Hue website for more info and the other cool products like the LED light strips and tap switch.