Philips Hue + Home Assistant: The Complete 2026 Integration Guide

Philips Hue is probably the most popular smart lighting system in the world. If you're moving to Home Assistant, your Hue lights are coming with you. The good news: Hue plays really well with Home Assistant. The integration is mature, stable, and has been around for years.

You have two options. Keep the Hue Bridge and use the official integration (easier, more features), or pair your Hue bulbs directly to a Zigbee coordinator and skip the bridge entirely (more control, but some tradeoffs). Let's go through both.

Why Use Home Assistant with Philips Hue?

The Hue app is fine for basic lighting control. But once you connect Hue to Home Assistant, things get a lot more interesting:

• Combine Hue with non-Hue devices. Motion sensors, thermostats, door locks, blinds. One automation that ties everything together instead of five separate apps.
• Local control. With the Hue Bridge integration, commands stay on your local network. No cloud dependency for turning lights on and off.
• Better automations. The Hue app gives you basic schedules and "if motion, then lights." Home Assistant gives you conditions, triggers based on sun position, presence detection, and logic chains the Hue app can't touch.
• One dashboard for everything. Your lights, heating, security, media. All in one place.
• No subscription. Home Assistant is free. Forever. No "premium features" locked behind a monthly fee.

Method 1: Keep the Hue Bridge (Recommended)

This is the path most people should take. The Hue Bridge handles all the Zigbee communication with your bulbs, and Home Assistant talks to the bridge over your local network. It's fast, reliable, and you keep all the Hue features you're used to.

What you get with the bridge integration

• Individual light control (on/off, brightness, color, color temp)
• Room and zone groups (control all lights in a room at once)
• Hue scenes imported as scene entities
• Motion sensor and dimmer switch events
• Entertainment areas for Hue Sync
• Firmware updates still managed by the Hue app
• All communication is local (bridge to HA, no cloud)

Method 2: Ditch the Bridge, Go Zigbee Direct

Hue bulbs are Zigbee devices. If you have a Zigbee coordinator (like a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 dongle, ConBee II, or SkyConnect), you can pair Hue bulbs directly to Home Assistant through ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT. No Hue Bridge needed.

Bridge vs. Zigbee Direct: Which Is Better?

Our recommendation: Keep the bridge. The Hue Bridge integration is one of the best in Home Assistant. It's fast, reliable, fully local, and you don't lose any Hue features. The only reason to go bridgeless is if you want all your Zigbee devices on one unified mesh, or you're the kind of person who enjoys removing dependencies for fun (no judgment, we get it).

Using Hue Scenes in Home Assistant

One of the nicest things about the Hue Bridge integration: your Hue scenes come along for the ride. Every scene you've created in the Hue app (or the built-in ones like "Relax," "Concentrate," "Energize") appears as a scene entity in Home Assistant.

Why Hue scenes are special

When you activate a Hue scene through Home Assistant, the command goes to the bridge, and the bridge sends optimized commands to all the lights at once. This means smooth, synchronized transitions. If you tried to do the same thing by controlling each light individually from HA, you'd see them change one by one, with a slight stagger. Not terrible, but not as polished.

How to use them

In an automation, use the scene.turn_on service and select the imported Hue scene. That's it. You can also trigger Hue scenes from dashboards, scripts, or voice commands.

Automation Ideas That Actually Make Sense

Here's where Home Assistant really shines compared to the Hue app alone:

Lights based on sun position (not just time)

Instead of "turn on at 7pm," try "turn on 30 minutes before sunset." This shifts automatically throughout the year. Combine it with gradual color temperature changes: cooler white during the day, warm white in the evening.

Presence-aware lighting

Use your phone's location or a room-level presence sensor (like the Aqara FP2) to control lights only when someone is actually in the room. The Hue motion sensor can do basic motion-on, but HA presence detection can distinguish between "just walked through" and "sitting on the couch."

Movie mode with one button

One automation that dims the Hue lights to 10% warm orange, turns on the TV via HDMI-CEC, sets the soundbar input, and closes the blinds. In the Hue app, you can dim the lights. In Home Assistant, you can orchestrate the entire room.

Wake-up light that checks your calendar

A sunrise simulation that starts 30 minutes before your first calendar event. No event? Sleep in, lights stay off. This is the kind of automation that makes people go "oh, THAT'S why Home Assistant exists."

Adaptive lighting

The Adaptive Lighting custom component for Home Assistant automatically adjusts your Hue lights' color temperature and brightness throughout the day, following the natural rhythm of sunlight. Install it, point it at your Hue lights, and forget about it. Your lights will be cool and bright during the day, warm and dim in the evening.

What About Matter?

The Hue Bridge now supports Matter (as of firmware updates in late 2024). This means you can connect the bridge to Home Assistant as a Matter device instead of using the Hue-specific integration.

Should you? Probably not yet. The native Hue integration is more mature and exposes more features than Matter currently does. Matter support for lighting is solid (on/off, brightness, color), but you lose Hue scenes, entertainment areas, and some of the bridge-specific optimizations.

Matter makes more sense for connecting Hue to platforms that don't have a dedicated Hue integration. Since Home Assistant has one of the best Hue integrations available, stick with it.

Hue After the Google Assistant Shutdown

With Google Assistant shutting down in March 2026, you might be wondering what happens to your Hue + Google Home setup.

Your Hue lights are fine. The Hue Bridge operates independently from Google. You'll lose the ability to say "Hey Google, turn on the living room lights," but everything else keeps working. The Hue app, the Hue Bridge, and all your scenes continue running as before.

If you want voice control after the shutdown, Home Assistant has you covered. You can use:

• Home Assistant Voice: The open-source voice assistant built into HA. Runs locally, no cloud.
• Amazon Alexa: Still works with both Hue (directly) and Home Assistant (via the Alexa integration).
• Apple HomeKit: Hue supports HomeKit natively. Siri works out of the box.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need the Hue Bridge for Home Assistant?

No, but we recommend keeping it. The bridge integration is the easiest to set up and gives you the best experience. You can pair Hue bulbs directly to a Zigbee coordinator, but you lose Hue scenes, Entertainment areas, and smooth group transitions.

Is the Hue integration local or cloud?

Fully local. Home Assistant communicates directly with the Hue Bridge over your LAN. No internet required. No data sent to Philips/Signify servers for basic control.

Can I use Hue and other Zigbee devices together?

Yes, but on separate networks. The Hue Bridge runs its own Zigbee network. Your other Zigbee devices (on ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT) run on a different one through your USB coordinator. They don't interfere with each other, and both work through Home Assistant. If you want everything on one Zigbee network, ditch the bridge and pair Hue bulbs directly.

How many Hue bulbs can I have?

The Hue Bridge supports up to 50 lights and 12 accessories (sensors, switches). If you need more, you can add a second bridge. Home Assistant supports multiple Hue Bridge integrations side by side. For Zigbee direct, it depends on your coordinator, but most modern ones handle 100+ devices easily.

Will my Hue Dimmer Switches work in Home Assistant?

Yes. Through the bridge integration, dimmer switch button presses show up as events in Home Assistant. You can use them to trigger any automation, not just light control. Same goes for the Hue Tap Dial, Hue Motion Sensor, and the Hue Wall Switch Module.

Can I still use the Hue app alongside Home Assistant?

Absolutely. The Hue app and Home Assistant can control the same bridge simultaneously. Many people use the Hue app for scene creation and quick manual control, and Home Assistant for automations. They don't conflict.

What about Hue Sync / Entertainment areas?

Hue Sync (for syncing lights with your screen content) only works through the Hue Bridge with the Hue Sync app or Hue Play HDMI Sync Box. If you ditch the bridge, you lose this feature. If you keep the bridge, Hue Sync continues working independently from Home Assistant.