Philips Hue finally understands your floor plan with its new SpatialAware feature

What you need to know

• Unlike old scenes that assigned colors at random, Hue SpatialAware uses an algorithm to map your room so lights work together.
• You scan your room with your phone, the Hue app builds a spatial model, and an algorithm orchestrates the scene automatically.
• About half of Hue’s Scene Gallery supports SpatialAware at launch, including Lake Mist, Mountain Breeze, Savanna Sunset, and Lake Placid.

Until now, Hue scenes looked nice, but didn’t really understand your room. Colors were assigned to lights without knowing their actual spots. For example, a lamp behind your couch might shine as brightly as a ceiling light across the room, which could ruin the effect Hue wanted. Now, with a new feature called Hue SpatialAware, that guesswork is being replaced with a more thoughtful approach.

Hue SpatialAware is Philips Hue’s biggest step yet toward making lighting feel designed instead of just programmed. Instead of treating each smart bulb as a standalone object, the feature considers your room’s layout and the placement of each Hue light. It then spreads colors and brightness in a way that copies how light works in real life.

The Hue app uses augmented reality and asks you to scan your room with your phone or tablet. This scan builds a model that shows where each light is, including floor lamps, wall lights, and ceiling fixtures. After that, an algorithm takes over and arranges scenes so every light fits in naturally.

If you add new lights later, just scan the area again and the room model updates on its own.

Nature scenes get the biggest upgrade

The most noticeable upgrade is in Hue’s nature-inspired scenes. About half of the updated Scene Gallery will work with SpatialAware at launch, including options like Lake Mist, Mountain Breeze, Savanna Sunset, and Lake Placid.

In practice, if you choose a sunset-style scene, lights on one side of the room glow with warm yellows, while lights across the room turn deeper and darker. You can still use the classic scene mode if you want, but after seeing SpatialAware, the difference is clear.

Philips Hue says the feature is built for Bridge Pro users, framing it as a premium experience that leans heavily on smarter processing and room awareness.

Bridge Pro is also becoming more flexible. Now, users can combine several Bridges into one Bridge Pro setup, with the only limit being the hardware’s capacity.

Hue’s AI assistant is also getting better. Now, you can ask it to create automations using natural language, such as setting wake-up routines with exceptions. It’s also adding more language support and learning how to guide users to the right troubleshooting help when problems come up.

Hue SpatialAware will launch in spring 2026 for Bridge Pro users. Most of the other upgrades will arrive between now and the first quarter of 2026.