Your lamp and ceiling light typically do their jobs, providing light, but is all light good for you? If you’re after a light that changes based on your circadian rhythms, it might be time to turn to smart lighting.
Depending on the time of the year, it might not be as easy to adjust to the changes in light. Winter darkness can kick in much earlier, and so it might throw out your timing just a little.
You can try to counter the problem with a seemingly endless supply of alarms, but there might be another technological solution to the problem, and it’s one the smart home can try to accommodate with light.
Specifically with smart lights, actually, as light bulbs can do a little more than merely provide light, but do so in a way that helps your circadian rhythms become more in tune with where they should be.
It’s something Australia’s answer to the Phillips Hue smart light bulbs has been working on a solution for, as Lifx offers customers a mode for circadian lighting called “Day & Dusk”, which matches the sun’s colour as it changes throughout the day.
In fact, over 100,000 households reportedly use the concept globally, with Lifx telling Pickr that winter tends to see the most use.
“As smart homes become the norm, we are seeing consumers take one step further to curate a ‘well home’ — a living space designed to enhance health and wellbeing, incorporating innovative technology such as smart lighting to help them improve the way they feel,” said Marc Alexander, Co-Founder of Lifx.
“Most people know that the blue light emitted by screens is harmful for sleep cycles, but how many of us stop to think about the colour of the lights in the bedroom and how that might be affecting our sleep?” too he asked. “Lifx can make an impact on a vital piece of the sleep puzzle – light. Day & Dusk helps users feel ready for bed, and wake up to soft light as nature intended.”
The technology in Day & Dusk is app-driven, but uses the WiFi lightbulbs made by the company, shifting colour and temperature of the light to mimic what the sun is doing at the time where you are, and getting you adjusted more easily.
Lifx says it should work on all of its products except the Mini White, and while you can control Lifx bulbs with other smart home systems like a Amazon Alexa or Apple HomeKit, it doesn’t seem that you’d be able to trigger Day & Dusk for other smart bulbs, such as those made by IKEA or Philips, as Lifx’s Day & Dusk is reliant on its own technology to work.
It’s a feature that works now, however, so provided you have (or are thinking of getting) a Lifx smart lighting product that isn’t the Mini White, you should be able to mimic the sun in your home.
