# Phillips HUE to emulate GE Reveal



## benhar (Feb 4, 2018)

So I’m spoiled by the GE Reveal bulbs around our house. Any other LED bulbs have a sickly yellow tint to me. I know technically the Reveals aren’t a true high CRI since they just filter out the yellow, but our rooms still just look better with them. 

So now to my question... I just tried the Philips HUE white ambiance, and again hate the tint so I intend to return them. Still want smart bulbs though... is it feasible to get the color HUE bulbs and tweak the color to match the Reveals? As in start with ~2850 temp add a touch of violet/red/etc? Or would that still not have the same effect?


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## pc_light (Feb 4, 2018)

benhar said:


> So I’m spoiled by the GE Reveal bulbs around our house. Any other LED bulbs have a sickly yellow tint to me. I know technically the Reveals aren’t a true high CRI since they just filter out the yellow, but our rooms still just look better with them.
> 
> So now to my question... I just tried the Philips HUE white ambiance, and again hate the tint so I intend to return them. Still want smart bulbs though... is it feasible to get the color HUE bulbs and tweak the color to match the Reveals? As in start with ~2850 temp add a touch of violet/red/etc? Or would that still not have the same effect?


Technically should be possible because the HUEs have almost infinite tweaking ability; but practically not so much as they are 3x more expensive than the Ambient Whites.

I don't own any Reveals but I can get a pretty good hint-of-pink tinted neutral white setting on mine that's similar to what I recall of Reveals in the store.


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## StarHalo (Feb 4, 2018)

You have to use the app with HUE bulbs to use them to their potential, if you just turn them on and off via your lamp switch, they default to the usual 2900K average household tint. The app's "Concentrate" scene/setting mimics the Reveals' very neutral tint at 4300K, though you're not going to get quite the level of color pop from LEDs. There's also a Kelvin slider so you can arbitrarily dial in any particular cool/warmth you want from 2200 to 6500K.

If you want to experiment with adding a touch of color to white, the possibilities are pretty much limitless since the app gives you a full rainbow palette to play with, just click anywhere:


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## benhar (Feb 4, 2018)

Thanks. The ambient white kit was $150 and the color kit was $200, so the difference might be worth giving it a shot. Or I may just watch for a sale.

I had put the ambient white next to an LED Reveal and adjusted it till the white baseboard looked the same, but the difference on non-white objects was surprising. And skin just looks dull and washed out. 

Side note, it’s a shame we can’t enter specific numbers on the app in lieu of the slider. Especially to recreate settings that look good.


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## StarHalo (Feb 4, 2018)

The Kelvin values of the recipe presets are fixed values:

Relax = 2237K
Read = 2890K
Concentrate = 4291K
Energize = 6410K

But you're not going to match the color pop/spectral curve of an incandescent filament behind blue tinted glass, not really a fair comparison.


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## benhar (Feb 4, 2018)

Thanks. Yeah I know I’ll never match the pop of an incandescent LED, but I’m happy with the LED Reveals, so I’ll settle for that


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## JoakimFlorence (Feb 28, 2018)

benhar said:


> So now to my question... I just tried the Philips HUE white ambiance, and again hate the tint so I intend to return them. Still want smart bulbs though... is it feasible to get the color HUE bulbs and tweak the color to match the Reveals? As in start with ~2850 temp add a touch of violet/red/etc? Or would that still not have the same effect?


In terms of color hue tint, yes.

The Philips color HUE uses 615-620nm amber/red emitter and a phosphor-converted lime-green emitter. That is sort of going to have a similar effect to "filtering out the yellow" but the CRI may just be about one point lower.

Personally, I don't really like the magenta color tint of the Reveal LED bulbs, but it _does_ somehow make the light feel less "yellowish" (hard to describe), which is an issue with other LED bulbs (mainly talking about <85CRI ones here).


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