Philips Hue Launches New Smart Lighting Solution for Kitchens

Philips Hue is finally getting into smart under-cabinet kitchen lighting. But since it's Hue, the company is doing it the most expensive way possible, and it'll take at least a year to come to the US. Still, if you want full-color lighting with your avocado toast, the new fully integrated smart lighting solution looks like a great solution — with no plugs or wires involved.

At the IFA tech show in Berlin this week, Philips Hue's parent company, Signify, announced a partnership with Europe's largest kitchen manufacturer, Nobilia, to integrate custom Philips Hue smart lights into its kitchen furniture.

To date, Hue has only offered plug-in light strips controlled by wireless switches. Hardwiring them into your kitchen required using a third-party solution, so this is an exciting step in the right direction. Other companies have a few options for this kind of integrated, color-changing smart lighting — GE Cync recently released a smart kitchen lighting system that can be hardwired — but Hue fans lack a simple solution.

The Nobilia partnership includes two new Philips Hue lighting options designed specifically for kitchen furniture: color-enabled recessed spotlights for cabinets and linear gradient light bars for shelving created 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 Nobilia cabinetry and hardwired into your home's electrical system, so they'll only work for new kitchens; this isn't a simple retrofit or DIY solution yet.

Philips Hue CTO George Yianni tells The Verge that this is just 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.

Although this week's announcement was only for Europe, the partnership is set to begin early next year but could come to the US at some point. The Verge spoke to Nobilia's Stefan Hagemann at the press event, who said Nobilia North America is working on bringing the product to the US, but that won't happen before 2026.

Speaking of better kitchen and dining lighting, Signify also announced that the Philips Hue Ensys 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 separately controllable lights, a downlight and an upper light, both of which offer full color and tunable white light.