Philips Hue is finally getting into smart under-cabinet kitchen lighting. But as it’s Hue, the company is doing it in the most expensive way possible, and it will be at least a year before it comes to the US. Still, the new fully integrated smart lighting solution looks like a pretty sweet solution if you hanker for full-color lighting to go with your avocado toast — with no plugs or wires in sight.
This week at the IFA tech show in Berlin, Philips Hue’s parent company, Signify, announced a partnership with Nobilia, Europe’s largest kitchen manufacturer, which integrates custom Philips Hue smart lights into its kitchen furniture.
To date, Hue has only offered plug-in light strips controllable by wireless switches. Hardwiring them into your kitchen requires using a third-party solution, so this is an exciting step in the right direction. There are some options from other companies for this type of integrated, color-changing smart lighting — GE Cync recently released a smart kitchen lighting system that can be hardwired — but Hue fans have lacked a simple solution.
The Nobilia partnership includes two new Philips Hue lighting options specifically designed for kitchen furniture: color-capable recessed spotlights for cabinets and linear gradient light bars for shelving made specifically for the partnership. These connect to the Hue Bridge to work with your Hue lighting system and sync with other lights.
The new lights are integrated into the Nobilia cabinetry and hardwired into your home’s electrical system, so they will only work for new kitchens; it’s not a simple retrofit or DIY solution yet.
Philips Hue’s CTO George Yianni told The Verge that this is a first step for the company. He says the company hopes to learn from the partnership and potentially develop more DIY-type products for kitchen lighting in the future.
While this week’s announcement was just for Europe, with the partnership scheduled to launch early next year, it could come stateside at some point. The Verge spoke to Nobilia’s Steffen Hagemann at the press event, who said Nobilia North America is working on bringing the product to the US, but it won’t be before 2026.
Speaking of better kitchen and dining lighting, Signify also announced that the Philips Hue Ensis pendant light fixture is now available in the US. The $479.99 hardwired chandelier-style light comes in black or white and is designed to hang over a kitchen or dining table. It has two individually controllable lights, a downlight and an upper light, both of which offer full color and tunable white light.
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