Smart lighting has been colorful, automated, voice controlled, and endlessly customizable for years. But at CES 2026, Philips Hue finally fixed the one thing that always felt off.
Your lights never actually knew where they were.
With SpatialAware, Philips Hue takes a massive step forward by giving your lighting system a sense of space. Not metaphorically. Literally. This new feature maps your room, understands the physical position of every light, and then designs scenes that make sense in the real world. The result is lighting that feels intentional, cinematic, and quietly impressive in a way smart homes rarely pull off.
This is not a new bulb. Not a flashy accessory. It is a software upgrade that makes every compatible Hue light you already own feel dramatically smarter.
Lighting That Understands the Room
Until now, smart lighting scenes were essentially guesses. A sunset scene might look nice, but every lamp would glow with its own idea of sunset, often clashing instead of cooperating. SpatialAware changes that completely.
Image Credits: Hueblog.com
During setup, the Hue app uses your phone’s camera and augmented reality to scan the room. Each light is mapped in three dimensions and anchored to its real position. Ceiling lights, table lamps, wall fixtures, even light strips are placed into a digital model of your space.
Once that scan is complete, the Hue system remembers exactly where every light lives.
From that point on, scenes stop being random and start behaving like real lighting design.
Scenes That Finally Feel Real
The magic of SpatialAware shows up the moment you activate a supported scene.
Take a sunset. Instead of every lamp glowing orange because that is what sunsets do, SpatialAware distributes color and brightness across the room. One side warms up with soft orange and pink tones. The opposite side drifts into deeper blues and purples. The room suddenly feels like it has direction, depth, and atmosphere.
Image Credits: Stuff
Daylight scenes get the same treatment. Higher lights take on cooler tones that mimic the sky. Lower lamps glow warmer, closer to how natural light behaves indoors. Night scenes become calmer and smarter, dimming or switching off lights that would break the mood and leaving only the fixtures that make sense at floor level.
Image Credits: Signify
It feels less like tapping a preset and more like someone carefully designed the room for you.
Philips describes it as having a lighting designer in your pocket, and for once that does not feel like marketing fluff.
Image Credits: FindArticles
Powered by the New Hue Bridge Pro
SpatialAware runs entirely on the new Hue Bridge Pro, which is required for the feature. This upgraded hub brings faster processing and more memory, allowing it to handle the spatial calculations locally. No cloud dependency. No extra sensors. Just your phone during setup and the bridge doing the heavy lifting afterward.
Image Credits:Reddit
Once a scene is configured, it behaves like any other Hue scene. You can trigger it with your voice, automate it, or include it in routines across your smart home platforms. The intelligence stays behind the scenes.
Importantly, SpatialAware does not lock you in. You can switch back to classic scenes at any time, or use SpatialAware only in rooms where it shines.
A Subtle but Powerful Shift
What makes SpatialAware so compelling is that it is not loud about what it does. There are no flashing demos or exaggerated effects. It simply makes rooms feel better.
Lights stop competing with each other. Colors feel intentional. Brightness makes sense. The entire system feels cohesive in a way smart lighting rarely achieves.
This is especially noticeable in rooms with multiple light sources, where traditional scenes often fall apart. SpatialAware turns complexity into an advantage, letting every fixture play its role instead of fighting for attention.
The Smart Home Grows Up
At CES 2026, there is no shortage of ambitious smart home ideas. But SpatialAware stands out because it fixes something fundamental rather than adding something flashy.
It respects the space you live in.
Philips Hue did not reinvent lighting here. It taught smart lights to behave like real light. And once you see it working, it is hard to imagine going back.
SpatialAware feels like the moment smart lighting finally grew up.