Scenes & effects

Effects are a setting in the Philips Hue app that let your lights mimic things from the natural world: the gentle glow of candlelight or a roaring fireplace, for example. Best displayed on gradient lights, effects work on any compatible Philips Hue light. Effects don't work on older generations of Philips Hue lights as those products don't have the hardware needed to support the feature. Additionally, some effects don't work on White bulbs.

Open a Room or Zone and tap the light on which you want to play your effect. Tap on the effects icon, and then tap the play icon on the effect you want to play. 

To save your effects into a scene, you can simply modify an existing scene or save your current light settings as a new scene:

1. Tap a Room or Zone.
   
2. Play the effect on all the lights you want.
3. Tap the plus (+) icon, and select Create custom scene.
4. Give your new scene a name and tap Save to save your current settings.

In the Philips Hue app, open a Room or Zone and tap on a light. If you see the effects icon (three stars), at least one light in that Room or Zone supports effects. You'll see a message if you try to play an effect on a light that doesn’t support it. 

If you’re not able to check in the app, look for a Bluetooth logo on the light or its packaging. Lights that feature a Bluetooth logo support effects. If your light is a gradient product, it will also support effects. 

If you're still unsure, check the specific product page on philips-hue.com, and the "What's supported" section that includes "Compatible with Effects" or read this PDF for further instructions on determining if your light is compatible with effects. 

1. Tap the Room in which you would like to create the scene.  
2. Tap the plus (+) icon in the My scenes section. 
3. Choose whether to create your new scene from scratch with the color wheel, from an image in the scene gallery, or from your own photo uploaded from your phone. 

Follow the steps to edit a light scene in the Philips Hue app:

1. Tap the Room for which you would like to edit the scene. 
2. Tap the scene you want to edit. 
3. Tap the pencil on the top right of the scene you would like to edit. 
4. Tap on one of the lights to bring up the color wheel. 
5. Drag the icons in the color wheel to select their color and use the slider to adjust the brightness. 
6. Tap the X to close the color wheel. 
7. Tap Save in the upper right-hand corner to save your new scene. 

All default (preset) light scenes are saved in the Hue scene gallery, even if you remove them from the Room, making it easy to recover:  

1. Tap the Room in which you would like to recover the scene. 
2. Tap the plus (+) icon in the My scenes section. 
3. Tap scene gallery and select the scene that you want to recover. 

With a dynamic scene, the lights in the Room or Zone transition through the colors of the selected light scene rather than staying at one single color. Any scene in the scene gallery can be played dynamically, with the exception of the Defaults category. For example, if you make Soho dynamic, each of the lights in the Room or Zone will transition through all five colors of the scene palette, so in this case from red to pink, to rosy, to purple, to cyan.

Set any scene (excluding those in the Defaults category), and then tap the play button on the scene card to make the scene dynamic. Dynamic scenes require at least one color-capable Philips Hue light. If you want your scene to be dynamic every time you set it, enable Auto-play by tapping on the pencil icon next to the scene card. 

Yes. Set a color scene, and then tap the play button to make it dynamic. Tap the three-dots icon (...) to adjust the dynamic speed while that scene is set. Tap the pencil to permanently adjust the dynamic speed for that scene.

Yes. You can change the brightness of the Room, Zone, or light on which the dynamic scene is playing just like any other scene in the app.

You can make a scene dynamic on any Philips Hue color-capable lamp, fixture, or bulb.

Yes. You can make any color scene dynamic — including the ones you created yourself — by tapping the scene and tapping the play button.

Scenes from the Defaults category — such as Natural light, Rest, Relax, Read, Concentrate, Energize, Cool bright, Bright, Dimmed, and Nightlight — cannot be made dynamic since they only contain warm-to-cool white light without colors from the color wheel.

If you want your scene to be dynamic as soon as you set them, you can enable auto-play by tapping the pencil icon next to the scene card. After auto-play is enabled, you can assign it for your accessory or automation.

In the app, open the Room or Zone the scene is in and tap the stop button on the scene card. 

Yes. In the Philips Hue app, set a scene and tap the play icon to make it dynamic.

The Natural light scene is the first a new kind of scene that automatically adjusts the shade of warm-to-cool white light throughout the day. It starts with bright, cool tones to energize you in the morning and gradually shifts to warmer, golden glows at the end of the day to help you relax and prepare you to go to sleep. You can also adjust the Natural light scene to your local sunset time to make it coincide even closer to the sun's cycle.

You can find the Natural light scene in the Defaults category of the scene gallery. You can add this scene once for each Room in your home.

Yes. After you’ve added the scene to a Room, tap on the Natural light scene card. Tap the pencil icon. For each time slot, you can choose another scene to use.  

If you’d like to edit each scene that Natural light uses, you’ll need to edit the individual scenes. For example, if you’d like to make the Energize scene dimmer, open the scene card for Energize. Adjust the brightness and save the scene. The changes you make to the individual scenes within Natural light will be reflected there.

Each time slot for Natural light scene uses a specific scene from the scene gallery, including Energize, Concentrate, Read, Relax, Rest, and Nightlight. For the Natural light scene to run, each of these scenes are automatically added to the Room if they weren’t already there.

Natural light is intended to support your wellbeing and daily routines with the best light for each time of the day. To do this, we use specific scenes, including Energize, Concentrate, Read, Relax, Rest, and Nightlight, that were designed for this purpose.

Tap on the Natural light scene, tap the pencil icon, and adjust the transition time. 

The auto-adjust mode allows your Natural light scene to be automatically adjusted based on your local sunset time. This makes the experience much more realistic.

The middle timeslot of your Natural light scene is the one that gets auto-adjusted to your local sunset time. Therefore, the original start time for this timeslot will be changed if you select this option.

For a better experience, we ensure each timeslot has a minimum duration of 30 minutes. For example, if the sunset time changes throughout the year and your Natural light scene's variable time slot gets within 30 minutes of the next timeslot, the next timeslot will also be adjusted to guarantee these 30 minutes.

When adding a Natural light scene to a room, the app first checks if you have your location information stored on your Bridge, such as for Out of home control. If it does, we automatically save the Natural light scene with auto-adjust enabled. 

Since sunset times vary from location to location, the app uses your location to auto-adjust your Natural light scene to the local sunset time.