How to Move Hue Lights When Moving House
If you have set you home, flat or room up with lots of smart gadgets it can be a pain to have to move them all if you move house or flat, different lay outs, different places for those gadgets and with smart bulbs, trying to know which is which when you move them.
With Hue bulbs each has their own serial number, however this can be a little tedious making note of each even if you only have a few let alone 10 plus.
Tips on how to Move your Hue Bulbs
Steps to moving your Hue LED lights to a new house.
- If you have a bulb in a lamp, leave it in there.
- If you have a bulb in a ceiling light then take the bulb out, stick a little masking tape to it and jot down on the bulb where it was before, or the name it has on the Hue app.
- For Hue bloom. Iris and Go lights, do the same, jot down what they are called on masking tape and stick to the underside.
- Again for any switches such as the dimmer or tap, jot down the name on masking tap and stick to the back.
By doing this when you move you know exactly what each bulb is and where it was before. When you move in and start placing items you tend to put them back in the same room they came from if they fit. The same can be said with these bulbs too, once you have them all back and set up, knowing they are working, you can then adjust and move one or two if needed.
Moving Light strips
Light strips are simple to move too, the only difference are that bulbs just unscrew out, if you have stuck your Hue light strip down peeling it off can be tricky, also once off it probably won’t stick down again. As before remove your light strip and carefully roll it up now to bend it too much preventing any damage to it. Again make a note of the name and stick down with masking tape (Only needed if you have more than one light strip in your set up).
When setting up you may want to use some new adhesive sticky tabs to attach this in your new home.
Moving your Hue Bridge
It is important to remember all your settings, scenes, bulbs etc are all linked and saved to the Hue bridge. This hub has all this data, therefore it is important to ensure this is kept safe so that you can plug it straight in again and all should work.
Remember to take your router too, even if your internet connection is not set up in your new home, plugging this all in as it was before will allow your Hue lights to work in your home.
If you want to move bulbs from an old room to now a new one, then you can easily do this and rename the bulb through your Hue app, by naming them initially and making a note on the bulb itself, it makes it a lot easier to know which is which bulb without having to turn each one on and off. You can take one bulb that you want to move, change it on the Hue app and plug into the other room.
Remember if you are moving bulbs from one room to another, any scenes set up may not work as before due to the bulb now being in another room, so you may have to update or change these depending on your set up before.
Setting up Hue lights in New House and Room
Setting top is quick and easy, first, set up and install your router and connect the Hue bridge and ensure all the blue lights are lit on the top.
Then it is a matter of installing the bulbs and lights where you want them. If bulbs are now in different rooms or need a new name then you can adjust this through the Hue app.
With all the lights installed and turned on at the power, they should also work as before as well as any timers and settings you had set.
Moving House but Leaving my Hue Lights – What to do?
If you are moving out but do not intend to take your Hue lights and set up, then the best thing to do is deactivate your Hue account that your system is connected to. You cannot transfer the account or change your email address, so it is best to delete this and let the new owner create and account and link it to this.
It maybe best to factory reset the Hue bridge and let the new owner start afresh and set it all up how they want, it will also remove any settings and timers you have set leaving a clean install for the new owner.
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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Jen
What if you move into a house that has the system but they didn’t leave the bridge.?
Hue Home Lighting
Depends on the set up, if they use Bluetooth bulbs you can use your phone or you can buy a bridge and connect them to that and then your network.
Carlos
Thanks this was helpful, I am moving to another home and I’m taking muy hue and lights and the bridge but not the router. I will be connecting to a different network.
Can I just plug the bridge to a different router? Will it work?
Abby
What if you want to move your LED strips to a different part of your room?
Hue Home Lighting
Just move them, you may need to use new tape to stick them down but there is no issues moving them
alaina
If I roll up my LED strips, won’t it stick to each other? Would it better if I place strips of wax paper between the strips when I roll it up?
Charlie Guthrie
What should I do if I’m moving home and leaving the Hue system behind? I can’t remember if the bridge is tied to me personally or not. I also want to make sure the people moving in aren’t left without any lights – how can I detangle myself whilst keeping it really easy for them to still use the lights. Can I just leave it, without doing anything? Then they won’t have any problems.
Myra
I am moving and I really don’t know if I can transfer my lights over to the new house. Is it possible to do so, or do I just need to buy a new set of lights?