The Benefits Of Using Smart Lighting In Your Children's Room September 28, 2016 00:00
You’ve tried that rotating carousel night-light your friends had such good luck with. You bought the slowly strobing orb that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie because all the moms at daycare swore by it. But no matter what you do, your baby just won’t sleep with a light on. And you're exhausted because of it.
It sounds like you should try smart lighting.
A smart night light
New parents are notorious for testing out different products and techniques on their child to see how he or she reacts. Some kids like clowns, others are traumatized by them, and finding out what your child likes and hates is a part of the parenting journey. And finding it out sooner rather than later can really save you a buck in the long run.
When it comes to trying out all the different options for how to light your child’s bedroom, the choices are limitless. There are oodles of night lights out there that claim to have the perfect brightness, the most calming colors, and a host of other features you don’t know will work for your baby until you buy them.
That’s why many smart bulbs’ dimmable feature makes them one of the most effective, and thrifty, options out there for lighting up your child’s room. Instead of having to cycle through ten, even twenty different night lights searching for that perfect brightness level, smart bulbs let you figure out what suits your little bundle of joy the best.
Studies have shown that exposure to bright light before bed will keep your little one up longer. Make use of the smart lighting scheduling feature found in many high end smart bulbs (like the Flux Smart Wifi and Flux Smart Bluetooth LEDs) by gradually lowering the lights automatically while you read your child her favorite bedtime story, making the transition to sleep even more peaceful.
Use colored light to lull your child to sleep
Another feature you’re sure to see out there as you shop around for your child’s night light is the different colors you have to choose from. With blues and greens and polka dots and patterns more intricate than you can imagine, picking out the right night light has never been more confusing than it is today.
Part of the problem comes from how much misinformation is out there. Many parents, for example, tend to believe that a soft blue light is the most calming for their sleeping newborn. After all, blue is a cool, relaxing hue that summons images of clear skies and sitting by the beach. What can get more soothing than blue, right? Well, apparently every other color out there, that’s what.
New research has shown that blue light is by far one of the worst light colors for anyone trying to catch a few winks. So while you may have heard about how disastrous using smart devices right before bed can be for our sleep cycle, it’s not just about the brightness, it’s about the color as well.
So if blue is the worst, then what’s the best color to bring on the ZZZs? The consensus seems to be, believe it or not, red. That’s right, the color of passion, anger, and love has actually proven to be the least sleep inhibiting light color out there. That means that at 3am when your child starts his nightly cry session, you can tend to his needs lit by a light that won't make it harder for him to fall back asleep. And every extra minute of sleep he gets means a minute more for you too!
Wake them up naturally
One smart lighting scheduling feature that has really caught a lot of people’s attention is the “sunrise mode”. You may have heard about dawn simulation, essentially an alarm-replacing gradually brightening light, and all the benefits that have been discovered about using it to greet the day rather than a traditional alarm.
Just in case you haven’t though, our bodies respond to light throughout the day by regulating different hormones and chemicals that pump through our blood. One of these chemicals, melatonin, is suppressed by bright light and activated by decreasing light levels. This is the chemical behind what makes us sleepy once it starts to get dark outside and, conversely its absence is what wakes us up in the morning when light shines through our windows.
Some lighting manufacturers have taken advantage of this biological effect by creating dawn simulators to slowly wake us up by brightening the room around us. Greeting the morning this way helps balance melatonin as well as cortisol in our system which will keep us energized throughout the day.
What this means for you as a parent is being able to gently rouse your baby from his peaceful slumber if you need to wake him up at a certain time. And once he gets a bit older, you can set his lights to a schedule so that he may even get out of bed for school himself, without all the moans and groans.
Teach them about colors using lights
Being exposed to and learning to identify different colors is an important part of every child’s development. At the early age of two months, many babies can distinguish between colors and white, and as they age the range of colors they can differentiate gets wider and wider.
Part of what makes colors so integral to a child’s healthy development is the fact that colors help your child make distinctions among the things he sees, to separate an object from the environment around it. So while teaching your child the names of the colors he sees might seem like just a way to put a name to a detail, you’re actually helping your child to experience reality more clearly.
That’s why exposing your child to a wealth of individual colors as well as combinations is so important to do at an early age, and smart lighting makes that easier than ever. With certain color changing bulbs, like Flux Smart Wifi and Flux Smart Bluetooth LED Light Bulbs, you have access to over 16 million different colors, all changeable on a whim. And while we don’t advise you teach your child about every single one of these 16 million different hues, these bulbs will bring a world of color to your baby’s room in one small, easy to use device.
Tell us what you think
Do you have any other smart lighting tips for new parents? Have you tried out any of the techniques above and, if so, how did they work out for you? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to check out Flux Smart Wifi and Flux Smart Bluetooth LED Light Bulbs.