Golden hour started

The Golden hour started trigger fires when golden hour begins, the time around sunrise and sunset when the sun sits low in the sky and the light turns warm and soft. Golden hour is the period when the sun’s elevation is between 4° below the horizon and 6° above it. You can react to the morning golden hour, the evening one, or both. Home Assistant calculates the exact time for every day from your home location.

Use it to start a warm scene as the light turns golden, dim the indoor lights to match the low sun, or lower the blinds against the glare.

Using this trigger from the user interface

If you prefer building automations visually, Home Assistant walks you through this trigger step by step. You pick what to watch, tweak a few options, and save. No YAML knowledge required.

To use this trigger in an automation:

1. Go to Settings > Automations & scenes.
2. Open an existing automation, or select Create automation > Create new automation.
3. In the When section, select Add trigger.
4. From the search box, search for and select Golden hour started.
5. Under Period, select Any, Morning, or Evening.
6. Optionally, set an offset to fire before or after golden hour starts:
   • Under Offset, enter how far from the start of golden hour to fire, such as 15 minutes.
   • Under Offset type, select Before or After.
7. Select Save.

Options in the UI

Using this trigger in YAML

If you work directly in YAML, or you want to know exactly what Home Assistant does under the hood, this section has the technical reference. It lists the field names you use in YAML, their types, and which ones are required.

In YAML, refer to this trigger as sun.golden_hour_started. A basic example looks like this:

trigger: sun.golden_hour_started

This fires when either the morning or the evening golden hour starts. To react to only the morning or the evening, add the period option:

trigger: sun.golden_hour_started
options:
  period: evening

To fire a fixed amount of time before or after golden hour starts, add the offset and offset_type options:

trigger: sun.golden_hour_started
options:
  period: evening
  offset:
    minutes: 15
  offset_type: before

This fires 15 minutes before the evening golden hour starts.

Options in YAML

Good to know

• This trigger does not use a target. It applies to the sun at your configured home location.
• Golden hour is the period when the sun’s elevation is between -4° and 6°. In the morning, it starts as the sun rises to -4°. In the evening, it starts as the sun descends to 6°.
• To react to the moment golden hour ends, use Golden hour ended. For the deeper twilight just outside golden hour, use Blue hour started.
• The length of golden hour changes through the year and with your latitude. Near the poles, it can last much longer or fail to occur on some days. When it does not occur, the trigger does not fire that day.

Try it yourself

Ready to test this? Go to Settings > Automations & scenes, create a new automation, and add this trigger. Save the automation, then change the state of the targeted entity to watch the trigger fire on your actual entitiesAn entity represents a sensor, actor, or function in Home Assistant. Entities are used to monitor physical properties or to control other entities. An entity is usually part of a device or a service. [Learn more].

For this trigger, there is no target entity to change. To test it, wait for the next golden hour, or temporarily switch to a trigger you can control while you build the rest of the automation.

More examples

Real scenarios where this trigger fires in automations and scripts. Copy any example and adapt it to your setup.

Automation: set a warm scene when evening golden hour begins

When the evening golden hour starts, turn on the living room lamps at a warm color so the room glows with the low sun.

• Trigger: Golden hour started
  • Period: Evening
• Action: Turn on light
  • Target: Living room lamps

alias: "Warm scene at evening golden hour"
triggers:
  - trigger: sun.golden_hour_started
    options:
      period: evening
actions:
  - action: light.turn_on
    target:
      entity_id: light.living_room_lamps
    data:
      color_temp_kelvin: 2700

Still stuck?

The Home Assistant community is quick to help: join Discord for real-time chat, post on the community forum with the trigger you’re using and what you expected to happen, or share on our subreddit /r/homeassistant.

Related triggers

These triggers work well alongside this one:

• Golden hour ended: Triggers when golden hour ends, in the morning, the evening, or either.

• Blue hour started: Triggers when blue hour starts, in the morning, the evening, or either.

• Sunset: Triggers when the sun sets.