At some point in their life everyone has to grow up, and the same goes for Philips’ flexible Hue Lightstrips. Once the perfect way to subtly turn your living room into a colourful rave, the LED strips can now be tuned to generate more natural white light for reading the paper, or just relaxing with some knitting.
But that doesn’t mean the party’s completely over. The new Philips Hue Lightstrip Plus, which comes with an adhesive backing so it can be easily installed out-of-sight as accent lightning (under your couch, above a kitchen counter, or below a cabinet), can still be tuned to produce almost any colour you can imagine. And at 1600 lumens they’re now brighter than the original version — perfect for anyone whose living room doubles as a nightclub on the weekends.
Available starting in October, a 2m long version, which includes a power adaptor, will sell for $US90. But you’ll also need the Philips Hue base station connected to your home’s wifi network to make it work with the Hue smartphone app. And if that’s not long enough for your needs, there will also be $US30 three-foot extensions available that can be easily clipped onto the end of the longer version without gobbling up additional outlets.