Credit: Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority

I have always been attracted to light. I naturally wake up to it every morning and I start winding down with it in the evening. Dim rooms, gloomy weather, and short winter days; none of these are my favorites. So when I moved from sunny and Mediterranean Lebanon to cloudy Paris about a year ago, I knew I was in for a bit of a shock to the system. But I had one tool in the box that I believed would help fix my sleeping and waking up pattern: Philips Hue lights.

Technically speaking, what I’m about to explain to you can be done with many other smart lights, and might be even easier or more customizable on other platforms. So why Hue? Simply speaking, I already own the hub and lights, so I used them. I picked them up a few years ago while building my smart home because of their power-on behavior setting and non-Wi-Fi connectivity. (I lived in an area with many power cuts and slow network connectivity.)