Just because the sun has set, it doesn’t mean you have to stop enjoying your garden. Now, thanks to a lighting revolution, you can paint your outdoor world with a brilliant colourscape as vibrant and ever-changing as the flowers and plants you love.
You may be familiar with Philips Hue lighting. Back in the ‘70s, Philips’ famous coloured bulbs were de-rigueur for stylish homes in need of a certain ambiance. Subsequent years brought complex, multi-light, multi-function lighting systems to the affluent (who didn’t mind settling in with the odd instruction manual or two…). But it wasn’t until recent times that the onset of simple, ubiquitous home Wi-Fi (and a portable computer that fits in your pocket) has allowed Philips Hue to bring our multi-light multi coloured dreams to life.
Philips Hue are a range of smart light fixtures and bulbs for your home that allow anyone to quickly and easily install upgraded lighting across their home, controllable from your smart device and giving you 16 million colours at your fingertips. And now the Philips Hue range is available in the garden too.
Start with a single bulb in the study… Turn it on and off… Adjust its brightness… Make the light warmer… Cooler… Or change its colour completely… All from the app on your phone, their own Hue switch with dimmer, or even a spoken command to your chosen voice assistant such as Amazon Alexa.
Each bulb is a complex lighting rig in itself, able to mix colour to create millions of tones.
Then you can add more bulbs… The hall… The living room… Create entire ‘scenes’ of lighting with colours and intensities tuned to suit your mood. Have ‘welcome home’ lighting to greet you as you walk through the door. A ‘bedtime’ scene for retiring, or a colourful ‘play time’ setting for the playroom.
Adding new lights to your set up is a simple single purchase and a few taps of the app.
And now Philips have expanded Hue into the garden with temperature and weather-proof versions of their award-winning, million-selling Hue fittings.
The Philips White and Colour Ambience line lets you line your pathways with hidden lighting… Highlight your favourite planting… Or create the perfect after-dinner, late night garden ambiance. Again, the mood and feel are all entirely designed by you and controlled from an app or your voice.
And installation is easy. There are mains hardwired offerings – so you can permanently and professionally install lights with discreet cables running to where you need – or plugged solutions allowing you to simply add a light to an outdoor socket in seconds.
There are floodlights, wall lights, pedestal lights and spotlights to choose from. All work in the exact same way, all connecting to a single discreet bridge device that connects to your Wi-Fi.
Our favourite is the Lily spotlight (which comes as singles or as a pack of three). This gorgeous subtle black tube will bathe foliage and features in any amount of light in any colour.
We first caught up with Hue at the Chelsea flower show 2019 when Hue’s Lily spotlights were used to illuminate the incredible RHS Back to Nature garden, co-designed by HRH the Duchess of Cambridge and Davies White.
Their brilliant demo changed the lighting from dramatic to subtle and gave the garden a whole new lease of life that – once the sun had set – had previously left us completely in the dark.
Creating your own scenes at home and doing the same is easy and fun. And switching between them to change the mood couldn’t be easier.
And from the 12th to the 26th of February – in plenty of time for your Spring/Summer planning and planting – Philips are planning a 20% mix and match promotion across their outdoor white and colour range.
So why not put your garden in the spotlight? Click here to find out about Philips Hue Lily and the complete white and colour outdoor range.
