You know when you go to a casino and there aren’t any windows, so you have no idea what time of day it is? The casino floor has oxygen pumped in to keep you awake and spending money all night long. You could go in at any point and you would not have any idea how long you’ve been there unless you looked at your phone.
The lighting in a casino doesn’t change based on what time of day it is. Because you’re not seeing the sun, your circadian rhythm is going to be all thrown off. But if you want a more natural situation, consider installing the right smart bulbs in your home. There is one feature that will set you and your body up for a more enjoyable time.
Smart bulbs can change colors and change your room’s design
It’s generally rather easy to do this
If you’re adding a smart bulb to your home, there are many features that can be beneficial to your home’s layout and decoration. For starters, it can make any room brighter. But most of them can be dimmed to a certain extent.
You’re going to have a white or an off-white color that you can adjust the shades and hues of. Many people prefer an off-white or a day glow yellow for their rooms, rather than a bright white or a regular yellow.
Not all smart bulbs can change color more than along the white color spectrum. But there are plenty that have words like RGB or 16 million colors on the box that let you know that they can change colors.
Adding a color-changing bulb to your home takes those features to another level. This is like having the world’s largest box of crayons and having every color.
Every color that you can imagine can be used on your color-changing bulbs, giving you the opportunity to make your room whatever you want it to be. It doesn’t matter what the socket is that you have for your light. There is a smart bulb for it. There are great smart bulbs that can be used in recessed lighting, just like there are great bulbs you can use in lamps, outdoor porch lights, and more.
Using color-changing bulbs can make it feel like day
But it can also make it feel like night
One of the more popular features many smart bulbs have is adaptive lighting. It’s important to know that not every smart bulb offers adaptive lighting.
If you do have bulbs that offer this feature, it’s a special one because it can regulate your circadian rhythm. Adaptive lighting changes the color temperature of your lighting to match up with what the sunlight is doing outside your home. It matches the natural solar cycle of what your body is perceiving from where the sun is during the day.
Basically, the light won’t be super bright and at 100% all the time to throw you off compared to what the natural light is doing. You don’t actually have to do much after you set it up.
In the mornings, the lights will be more amber to help you ease into your day. The light will be a more brownish hue with a warmer color. As the day goes on, the lights turn to a bright and cool white to help you maintain focus and keep you awake. This is the kind of light that casinos have all day long.
As the day continues, the light transitions into warmth and cozier tones to help you wind your mind down. The smart home platform of your choice will adjust the smart bulbs’ color, relying solely on the time of day and the position of the sun.
The adaptive lighting is a bit different per smart home platform
It takes some getting used to
Depending on what smart home platform you use, your adaptive lighting controls might be a bit different. For starters, many smart bulbs can work with multiple smart platforms, so it’s really more about what platform you have than the smart bulb. For example, I have LIFX smart bulbs and they are Matter-enabled bulbs that work with many different platforms, including my Amazon Alexa smart home.
For me to use adaptive lighting, I just have to set a timing schedule to adjust my light bulbs. That’s the extent of how Alexa handles adaptive lighting. I can also use the LIFX app, which has a built-in Circadian Rhythm feature. But if you use HomeKit and use an Apple Home Hub, you don’t have to use your bulbs’ native app.
HomeKit lets you go into your smart bulb, once it is set up, and go into the color temperature picker. From there, you can tap on Adaptive Lighting and the feature will be enabled. If you have Home Assistant, you can click on Settings > Devices & Services > Add Integrations. From there, type in Adaptive Lighting and then create a new group and click Configure.
If you use Samsung SmartThings, you can select a circadian profile and have the lights match the state behavior. It automatically keeps your lights matched up with the light outside.
Get more out of your lights with adaptive lighting
The smart home finish that you’re looking for might just be adding color-changing bulbs to it. This can provide your home with a face lift and can be what you need to be more awake during the day and ready for bed at night. It’s an easy thing to set up, even if your smart home platform doesn’t have a specific setting for it.