So why would you want to set your Philips Hue lights to come on at sunrise and off at sunset? Well depending on where you are, you might be waking up around the same time as the sun. So with these smart lights, you could have the lights fade in to come on fully at sunrise. It’s a much more pleasant way to wake up versus just having your alarm blaring, or lights coming on at full brightness. Which if you have the newer 75W or 100W bulbs, that can be very bright and a pretty rough way to wake up in the morning. I actually use this feature on my Philips Hue lights, and have for almost a year. I no longer rely on my alarm to wake up a specific time. I generally wake up a few minutes before my alarm would normally wake me up, and it’s a lot more pleasant this way. So without any further ado, here’s how you can turn on your Philips Hue lights at sunrise (and off at sunset).
How to turn on your Philips Hue lights at Sunrise
There’s two main ways that you can set your Philips Hue lights to turn on at sunrise (and off at sunset). Firstly, through the Philips Hue app, and secondly in the Google Home app. The Google Home app is going to require more steps to be done, but it’s still largely the same. And today, we’ll show you how to do each method. So that no matter what you app you want to use (or perhaps use the most), you can make this happen.
Philips Hue app
Open the Philips Hue app.
Then tap on the “Automations” tab at the bottom. It’ll be right next to the Home tab. Next, tap on the + sign in the upper-right hand corner.
On this next screen, you’ll see a bunch of different options for different automations. But what we want is “Custom”, so scroll to the bottom and tap on that.
This screen will show you when to start and stop the automation as well as when it would repeat. So you’ll want to tape on the “Select a time” across from Start at.
Here you can choose a specific time, or at Sunrise, or Sunset. You can also choose how long you want the fade duration to last. Obviously, we’ll want to choose “Sunrise”. Next, it’ll ask for your location if it doesn’t already have it.
Now, there’s a scroll wheel where you can choose if you want it to turn on directly at sunrise, or perhaps 15 or 30 minutes before or after the the sun rises.
Once you have that set, tap Done. Now you’ll repeat those steps for the “Ends At” option. Just tap on Sunset, and then at what exact time you want it to start turning off.
Next, Philips Hue will ask what lights you want to use for these lights. That can be a specific room, or your entire home. You can also choose one light in a certain room, by tapping the down arrow to the right.
Once you have selected the lights you want to use, tap “Next”.
Philips Hue will next ask what should your lights do? Which scene do you want to use, you’ll probably stick with the “bright” scene.
Finally, you’ll name your automation.
And that’s it. Now you’re finally done and Philips Hue will automatically wake you up at sunrise with this new automation. You can also go back through the Philips Hue app to turn off and/or delete this automation if you wish to do so.
Google Home app
Now with the Google Home app, open it and then select the “Routines” button.
From there, choose any routine there. We’d recommend the “Good morning” one.
Tap on the “When I say to my Assistant”, and then delete that phrase. This way the lights will come on without any interference from you.
Now tap on “Add Starter”. Tap on “At sunrise or Sunset”.
Like with the Philips Hue app, you’ll choose the days it repeats, and you’ll also need to select your location. This is important in case you have multiple homes in your Google Home app. Then tap on “Add Starter”.
Now, in order to get it to do the same thing for Sunset and turn off the lights then, you’ll need to start a new routine. So repeat the steps above, but choose Sunset and then turn off lights then. And that’s it. That’s how you can set your Philips Hue lights to turn on at sunrise and off at sunset. It’s pretty simple to do. While it seems like it’s a lot less steps to use Google Assistant to do this, it’s a bit more cumbersome, since you do need to use two separate routines to make this possible. But then again, that is probably more useful that only want to turn lights on at Sunrise and don’t care about sunset.
