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Amazon Echo & Alexa Guide to Hue Lights Commands

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With Amazon Alexa you can take control of your smart home, asking it to change the colors of rooms, turn lights on and off using simple commands. We have rounded up a range of commands that will work allowing you to take control of your Philips Hue light system without having to press a button.

Change Hue Light Colors with Alexa

Using these commands below you can change the colors and scenes of your Hue bulbs as well as turning them on and off, and making them brighter or dimmer.

Setting Hue Scenes in Alexa

With Alexa you can now ask to turn your Hue lights to a set scene which you have set up and saved.

  • “Turn on {scene} in {room}”
  • “Alexa, turn on Relax in the {room}”

Alexa Hue Color Commands

Change the colors of your hue bulbs or rooms using these Alexa commands.

  • “Turn on/off {specific light} or {room} or {Echo group}”
  • “Set {light} to 50%”
  • “Alexa, turn my {room} light green.”
  • “Alexa, set the {room} light to orange,” or “Alexa, make the {room} warmer,”
  • “Alexa, brighten {room} to 60 percent”, or “Alexa, dim the {room} lights”
  • “Alexa, {room} lights fifty” or “Alexa, {room} lights fifty percent”

You can also use this color list that will change the colors of the bulbs to matching colors…

  • “Alexa turn the lights Tomato” – a nice shade of pink.
  • “Alexa turn the lights Peru” – nice at-home champagne color.
  • “Alexa turn the lights Firebrick” – A dark red warm color scene
  • “Alexa turn the lights LightSalmon” – A warm light pinky red color
  • “Alexa turn the lights Dark Khaki” – A dark green color

It is important to note that using Alexa to change your Hue color bulbs only works if you have a second generation Hue bright, it will not work with the first gen bridges. You can see which you have from the image below.

Hue bridge generations

Alexa all lights off

Turn all the lights off in your house using simple Alexa commands

  • “Alexa turn off all lights”
  • “Alexa, lights out”

Connecting the Philips Hue lights to the Amazon Echo

Read our guide to setting up Hue with Alexa here.

Other Smart home commands

  • Change the color temperature of the lights: “Alexa, make the {room} lights a little warmer.”
  • Adjust temperature: “Alexa, raise the temperature {x} degree.”
  • Set temperature: “Alexa, set the temperature to {x}.”
  • Lock your doors: “Alexa, lock my back door.”
  • Close your garage door: “Alexa, ask Garageio to close my garage.”
  • Discover smart home devices: “Alexa, discover my devices.”
  • Use IFTTT recipes: “Alexa, trigger [IFTTT recipe].”

Alexa Hue Scenes and Lights not working?

Ensure the Alexa home skill is enabled, to do this follow these steps

  1. Go to alexa.amazon.com
  2. Forget all smart home devices and disable/remove hue skill
  3. Go to meethue.com > My Hue > Settings > My Apps and deactivate Alexa on Echo
  4. Enable hue smart home skill
  5. Press the button on Hue bridge and discover devices

Have we missed any commands? Any that you have used that work too? Let us know below in the comments.


Founder & Editor

Mike is the founder of Hue Home Lighting, a huge Hue fan with far too many lights, covering home and garden. A smart home gadget addict and also enjoys the odd bit of DIY

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54 Comments

  1. C. Conroy

    Do you need special lamps to use the Hue bulbs or can they be used in everyday house lamps?

    Reply
    • Hue Home Lighting

      They are designed to replace like for like bulbs in the home, so no you don’t need any special lamps or fittings etc. You do need a Hue bridge though, so if you are new to Hue, best place to start is with a starter kit.

      Reply
    • Celia A Benavidez

      Every day lamps that are not enclosed (i.e. lamps that are not sealed off in glass whereby no air circulation is present.) Enclosed lighting fixtures can cause overheating of the bulb which will cause it to fail.

      Reply
    • Road Warrier

      This depends on what you want to do with them. If you just want to turn them on and off using Hue/Alexa (or similar), then the use of a Smart Plug will allow you to do this. If you want to be able to dim them, then you’ll need to use Hue bulbs.
      I’ve a set of LED downlighters (not Hue) in the garage door soffit, that turn on using the Hue geolocation function – I don’t need to be able to dim them, just see the door and drive as I reverse up.

      Reply
  2. Albert

    Everything worked as described above with the Echo Plus and the Hue color bulbs (without the Philips bridge). Then I also installed the Philips Hue Bridge (because this offers more functions than the Echo Plus) and paired the bulbs with the bridge (after unpairing from Echo Plus, because they seemingly cannot be paired to both at the same time). Then I paired the Hue bridge with the Echo Plus, but now Alexa cannot change the color of the bulbs anymore. Is this normal?

    Reply
    • Celia A Benavidez

      I don’t know if this helps but I set up Hue first bridge and all then updated all the lights. Finally, I paired it to my Amazon Show. I think Hue needs to set up first before it can pair properly with Amazon. Make sure you of course give permissions when you use the Alexa app to pair to Hue (apologies in advance for stating the obvious just want to make sure) and of course wishing you the best of luck.

      Reply
  3. Jamie

    Im confused, can i control bulb Colour, E.g set Light to red without a bridge. Just using echo plus?

    Reply
    • Hue Home Lighting

      Yes you can, however by using the Hue bridge you have more uses and commands, allowing you to set scenes etc which you cannot do through just using the Echo plus.

      Reply
    • Celia A Benavidez

      I believe you can. I think the difference is you don’t get 16 million color options and for that matter other options the HUE integration provides. Alexa is limited in its “skill” sets…I want my lights to sync with music and movies…so I got the bridge. But I also bought the Echo Show which has its own hub and use both hubs for a more “smooth” experience. I do not think it is necessary you’ll just have less functionality but should still be able to change the lights of each room to a different color if you choose (as I do all the time…love the hub though…nothing like waking up to a soft music color sync in the morning!

      Reply
  4. Malky Christie

    I have 2 hue colour candles in my bedroom and would like to add a white bayonet to my ceiling light can these be separated by command i.e. turn on ceiling light and leave the colour bulbs on a separate command ? Thanks

    Reply
    • Hue Home Lighting

      Yes, you could say turn on bedroom lights to turn them all on, or turn on ceiling light to just turn that on when you name them.

      Reply
    • Celia A Benavidez

      yes…all you have to do is use the Hue app to set up a room…in that process you’ll be asked to assign each light bulb to each “group” (in this case “ceiling light.” You’d create the room then assign the colored hue bulbs numbers and the white bayonet a number and voila you can turn on and off or change each bulb color according to bulb ability…separately. That is to say my living room lights are now purple and pink…and they look awesome…and yet I’ve left my lovely kitchen a nice shade of “Peru” just assign the bulbs a number and group…voila. EASY. So much easier than it sounds.

      Reply
  5. unhappy person

    I’ve sat here for an hour and I can only turn on an individual bulb with Alexa, Turn on Kitchen one…… I have a group called kitchen with all 3 lights in the kitchen. Alexa, turn on Kitchen…. gives me I have multiple lights with that name….so I say turn them all on, and that doesn’t work….. groups are useless. I also use a second app to control my hue lights because the hue app is garbage for setting up their motion sensors. I’ve seen people that delete a whole bunch of stuff in the hue app to get things to work correctly. I’ve spent thousands on your products and they do not work very easily at all. Lights would just turn on and stay on for no reason…. no motion but they stay on….so I spent all day resetting the hub and resetting up the lights and I still can’t get it to work correctly.OH and the amount of space you have on the hub for rules is sad. I have a small house that I’m trying to fully automate and I can’t do it with one hub? I have 21 lights, lights strips and color bulbs and 9 motion sensors. One hub can’t handle a turn on time, turn off time for all of them before I run out of space….. I’ve wasted so much time trying to get things to work. I’m struggling to get a color to turn on for a single light or light strip. Not sure if it supports scenes for a single light either I tried Alexa, turn on “Parlor Colorloop” in Parlor. Fail. I just renamed my Kitchen Fan 1 – Kitchen Fan 2 – Kitchen Fan 3 to Kitchen F 1 etc……group is still kitchen…..I’m running a hub discovery and will ask alexa to do the same in 5 min….she found nothing. running discovery from alexa app…..and that was no help….. do you have any real documentation? I tried Alexa, Lights out and she says there are a few things with that name….. seriously WTF…..

    Reply
    • Paul THomas

      I names room lights things like K1 for kitchen, m1 for main, lr and ll for right and left lamps etc. Then I grouped the full names, so for example lr and ll grouped in Living room.

      Seems to work perfect.

      I used the Hue app to set up devices and scenes (which i deleted and reset as red, cyan etc.

      Then when you scan in alexa app it should pick up the lot. Then set groups in Alexa app with the imported devices

      Reply
    • Celia A Benavidez

      I’ve had exactly the opposite happen to me. Everything set up really easy…but the one thing I do know is that I struggled with the lights cause my commands weren’t something Alexa recognized. I wish I could help but there are a couple of things you’ve left out…which unit are you running Alexa on…Echo Dot? Echo Plus? Echo Show? The answer to that question would effect affect results. Also are using the Hue hub and the Echo hub? Another thing I found is that it paired to the wrong light bulbs which is to say light bulbs for the living room paired to the bedroom and such. But that is a super ez fix…just unscrew the light bulb and put it into the socket/lamp of the room it responds to. In other words my living room light kept going on in the bedroom so I just switched the bulbs…voila! I know you are getting impatient but an hour isn’t very much time to set up anything really. Finally, all you had to do when you told Alexa “Lights Out” and she says there are a few things with that name…next time just offer “Hue Lights” and she’ll respond as you wish her to. Keep in mind Alexa is trying to learn your voice…that isn’t going to be done in an hour and all of this just takes practice. Honestly…it only took me an evening…(3 hours plus) but now I’m thrilled…so don’t give up!

      Reply
  6. unhappy person

    I just asked siri to turn something red and boom we have color…..I asked alexa to turn something red and she says she doesn’t support that…. I saw a users suggestion to create some IFTTT recipes to “trigger” something to a color. While I appreciate the suggestion, this should be something alexa understands without creating extra rules.

    Reply
  7. Steve

    I have a scene that includes several lights (not all) in one room. When I tell my Echo to activate that scene in that room it turns on all of the lights, not just the ones that are included in that particular scene. That does not make sense to me?

    Reply
    • Steve

      Please disregard my earlier comment, I needed to update the scenes in the Alexa app and now the scene is executed correctly.

      Reply
  8. Brent Smith

    My hue is offline and alexa said it doesn’t support living room and my computer shows warning signs on all lights but lights turn off & on manually by light switch how can I fix it.

    Reply
    • sam

      Deregistering and than registering the device work for me and in another case I just remove and added the light to Alexa app.Looks something wearied happening

      Reply
    • Celia A Benavidez

      did you try the specific commands “Alexa turn living room to Firebrick” vs “Alexa turn the lights in my living room to Firebrick” – this is the one thing that is a bit frustrating…but the way I figure it is that Alexa is still learning my voice and learning in general. But as time goes by my commands will be received more readily. Nonetheless, I do know the frustration of asking the lights in the living room to change over and over and over…you’ll get it! just takes practice.

      Reply
  9. Gisele Laframboise

    Is there any way to connect with hue without a smart phone? Can I do it through an iPad?

    Reply
    • Celia A Benavidez

      Sure depending on the version of operating system that is running on your iPad is compatible. So long as you use the Hue app. I’d be sure to connect/pair the lights to Hue and then pair it to your iPad…you don’t need Alexa either. You need to make sure your iPad obviously has internet connectivity and that you use the same network to pair Hue as you do to get online with your iPad otherwise they won’t be able to communicate…via your router (super easy to connect just use the ethernet cable Hue provides and use the yellow colored phone looking jack on the router so you can connect Hue to the internet and thereby enabling the wireless communication between the Bridge and your Pad.

      Reply
  10. JH

    My lights where working just fine with Alexa, but this week the command ‘Alexa lights off’ stopped working. Now Alexa says ‘Theres more than two things with the same name, which one do you want?’ and can’t figure out the command to turn all the lights off. Any ideas?

    Reply
    • Michael Smith

      I’m adding my comment to this comment in case somebody trying to use Alexa thinks they are losing their mind, like I did…. I have a list of the 123 colors that Alexa can respond to and change bulb colors to (if the bulbs are capable). They include esoteric color selections such as ‘Peru’ and ‘Papaya Whip’. I’ve had Alexa for over a year, and often use her to change the colors of my wifi lights. However about six months ago, Alexa FORGOT all of her colors. First it was just the exotic colors, but it gradually grew until she didn’t understand the colors black, white, or blue. Any color that I gave her she came back with “I don’t understand”. This went on for about a month, then all of a sudden one day they were all back. Thinking this through, this had to be some experiment the Google people were doing – at our expense. Anybody who thinks they’ve got a powerful digital helper in Alexa or any other assistant only has to use it for a week or two to see that we’re a long way from that still. Most maddening to me is the tendency to all of a sudden say “I don’t understand” in response to something she’s done hundreds of times before. Or, #2 pet peeve with that witch Alexa is you give her a command that you’ve given her many times before, you see the light come on so she’s processing – then her light goes off and nothing happens. You might have to repeat the exact same phrase 3 or 4 times before she does it… what’s up with that? And don’t try to blame it on my voice, it’s not that. Anyway, that’s my vent on Alexa…

      Reply
  11. Kathy

    I am getting so frustrated, HELP please! I connected my Hue Starter Kit months ago, it works with the Hue app but has never worked with my Alexa’s, she always says “I found more then 1 light in living room or wherever. I spent hours on 2 occasions trying to delete all the Hue app stuff from Alexa and re-adding it…. Nope, it always come back with double (2 living rooms, 2 bedrooms etc.) and I only have 1 bulb in each of these 4 rooms, and when I go into my Amazon Alexa app in Smart Skills it shows double for each of the bulbs. I am finally trying AGAIN after ignoring the problem for a couple months. What to do?

    Reply
  12. Les Charles

    Not ready for everyday consumers, way too much BULL. Try, just once, Philips, to make something simple…like a lightbulb. Name this name that, no it’s not the freaking “bedroom” it’s the $50 “hue color lamp one” and it doesn’t want to be called “bedroom”, try again, press the button on the $52 bridge…again! I am just going to wait until this shakes out , it is not ready for prime time. And the app doesn’t work with Kindle Fire HD. Somebody is acting like Apple. Hear there’s a new app coming, hope Philips farmed that out. I have purchased a bridge, a color bulb, and two white bulbs. Will it be another dead-end bit of too expensive tech? Lower your prices by HALF, deliver an app that works well, then we’ll see.

    Reply
  13. Anaya Dic

    Right, With the help of Alexa we can change hue light color & control the lights.

    Reply
  14. dave stanton

    How about two hubs in two locations controlled by one unified alexa account? I need to be able to log into two meethue accounts. As it stands Alexa only knows how to make one hub’s lights “White” or any color at a time but cannot handle the other hub saying the bulb cannot do that…

    Reply
  15. Alexa Help

    Right! you are absolutely describe it in this post. We can change Hue lights if we connect them with our Alexa device. We just need to speak exact command to Alexa device and it will work definitely.

    Reply
  16. Stephen Heaps

    Can alexa change the colour of the philips bloom or is it only through the app?

    Reply
  17. Steve P

    Struggling with controlling Hue through Alexa. The underlying issue is, I think, that I do not live alone. The echo “belongs” to my wife. I’ve installed Hue so Hue “belongs” to me. I am enabled in the Amazon household. I have control of Hue if I “switch accounts”.

    – how should it be set up to enable us both to control Hue without switching accounts?
    – if we both install Hue, would that mean that we have independent sets of Hue data, like names of lights and rooms, or is it possible to “share” the one set of data?

    Reply
  18. Steve P

    I’ve got Alexa and Hue working with 2 rooms and 3 bulbs. I’ve just used the Hue app and made another 2 rooms and added another 2 bulbs, one in each new room. Alexa doesn’t seem to know about these 2 new bulbs/rooms. Is there a time delay/refresh period? Do I need to “push” the new data in some way?

    Reply
  19. Charles Stout

    I have followed those directions to re-establish Alexa with the hue bridge and I still cannot get the scenes to work even though they are correctly populated in scenes on the Alexa app. Help please.

    Reply
  20. Stephen Gillanders

    There are two methods of setting a light group – Within the Alexa App and within Hue. The methods seem to be different and have conflicts I cannot resolve.

    In that within the Alexa app I can define crossovers of groupings. For example: a group called “Cooking lights”, and one called “Dining lights” can be setup where the bulbs in each group are also members of a wider group called “Kitchen lights”. This works well with simple On/Off and percentage brightness commands, but seems to have no access to Scene control regardless of the voice command syntax I use.

    Crossover groupings are not possible in the Hue App; a bulb can only be a member of a single group as far as I can see. But here I can exercise scene control… at least within the Android app.

    I could live with these differences, but it seems that no matter what I name the Hue defined groups, I cannot get them to activate via voice commands when they live alongside the Alexa defined ones. I need the Alexa grouping flexibility within my house so I have no choice but to use the Alexa smart home groupings, but doing this loses the ability to use “Scenes” effectively with voice activation.

    Am I missing something here? The documentation from both Amazon and Phillips on this interface seem to fall short of addressing this. I trained in Electrical Engineering/Computing and work in IT integration so I would hope I had a reasonable chance of setting this up effectively… as it stands I am considering whether or not to expand my light setup beyond the existing 10 bulbs to the 50+ I had planned!

    Reply
  21. Matteo

    Hi,
    Can Alexa on the Echo plus 2^ gen connect to the first gen philips bridge ( the round one)?
    I tried but no way to find the bridge.
    Thanks

    Reply
  22. Sad and upset customer

    See who’s in the Phillips hue app definitely do not work with Alexa. I have use the exact phrasing suggested in your webpage to get Alexa to open up seems that already been baked in by Phillips, such as “Savannah sunset.“ Instead, all stupid Alexa says is that there is no device savanna sunset. She doesn’t get it no matter whether I say kitchen first and savanna sunset second or vice versa. What do I have to do to get this to work??

    Reply
  23. Brett

    Swapped out some white bulbs for coloured bulbs in my living room and bedroom. Got them to work perfectly first time on the app but Alexa point blank refused to activate scenes even after getting her to discover the devices.

    Just followed the above instructions for resetting app / device / Alexa, etc and everything now working as it should 🙂

    Reply
  24. ALI FOX

    I brought the Hue B22 starter kit 2 weeks ago & installed in my bedroom – all OK. I have just got the 2m Light Strip for my Living room. When I turn on the light Strip (Alexa turn on Light Strip) it also turns on my Bedroom Lights ??
    How can I stop this happening?
    I have the lights named & Grouped under separate headings in the Alexa Ap & different rooms on the Philips Hue Ap
    Do I need to re-set everything, or will it always do this??

    Any help / advice would be great.

    Reply
  25. Nick C

    I recently purchased an Echo dot and paired it with my Hue setup. Alexa works great with two of the three scenes. The third, my kitchen, is un responsive. The conversation goes like this…

    Me: Alexa, set the kitchen lights to green
    Alexa: Kitchen doesn’t support that

    I can however, control the all the lights manually through the Alexa app. How do I fix this?

    Reply
  26. Steven

    I can get my alexa to reconize colours, and even responds to Tomato, Peru, firebrick but won’t turn to any pre set or created scenes in the hue app I.e tropical twilight, energize. Do you have do anything additional to make these work? Many thanks in advance. Steven

    Reply
  27. Christopher Bridge

    Is there a command to determine, list out, the lights that are currently on/off?

    “Alexa, which lights are on?”

    Reply
  28. Warren Grantham

    The Echo Plus with Alexa will control the Hue Color bulb both with different colors and dimming the lights. What is unclear and impossible to find when you tell Alexa to make the light more cool how much is the temepreature changed. In other words using Ecjho Plus how many steps are there between the lowest temperature and the highest temperature. The maximum lumens output is at 4000 deg K but it cannot be set by Alexa and Echo Plus without getting a Hue controller. How do I set the Hue Color bulb to maximum lumens output?

    Reply
  29. Gary Caldwell

    I have a hue lolour bulb connected to my Alexa, is it possible to make it change through the colours with one command?

    Reply
  30. John Tudor

    what do I tell Alexa to turn light back to white? My Alexa has no idea what I’m talking about when I tell her to turn the lights white

    Reply
  31. Kurt Stuhler

    Is there a way to have Alexa recognise a Hue timer, IE. I have a 1 minute timer set in the Hue app in my living room so I can activate the timer and it gives me 1 minute to leave the room before it shuts the lights off. I would like to be able to activate this timer with Alexa instead of just having it turn the lights off immediately.

    Reply
  32. Rick D

    Alexa will change my Hue lights to any color but white. Is there a special command I’m missing?

    Reply

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