This Sleep Light That Mimics Sunrise & Sunset Is Legit Making Me Less Of A Morning Demon

I try a lot of weird stuff in my job, some of it not so good (these things are banished to the abyss of my wardrobe) and some legitimately amazing. I have to say, when I decided to try the Nox Sleep Light, I was skeptical.

I am an okay sleeper. I fall asleep relatively easily, although almost always in a stressed, did-that-person-text-me-weirdly anxious state. Gotta love Generalised Anxiety Disorder, huh.

But the actually sleep part has always been fitful. I wake up multiple times in the night. I don’t feel like I’ve had a good sleep when I wake up in the morning. I distinctly remember tossing and turning a lot.

I didn’t know much about sleep patterns and all of that before I spoke to Rachel Beard from A.H. Beard. Yes, she is a fifth-generation family member of the dude that started the Aussie company, and while they specialise in mattresses and beds, they also have these neat side hustle of sleep aids.

The Nox Sleep Light is one of these aids, designed to help you fall asleep, stay asleep and wake up naturally. Sounds like a dream, right?

Me most mornings

I chatted to Rachel before trialling a Nox Sleep Light. She explained how our modern life of screens and electricity means we don’t really “power down” the way we would have in the olden days. When you think about it, it makes sense – how long have we had electricity? Like, a hundred or so years? For humans who have existed for tens of thousands of years, I’m sure evolution hasn’t quite caught up with the presence of bright daylight-esque surroundings until the second we hit the sheets.

The Nox Sleep Light works to set the ~mood~ in your room pre-sleep with a soft, red light, and also to slowly wake you up in the morning by mimicking a sunrise.

The first night I tried it out, I couldn’t work out how to turn the clock off. It was pretty bright – I sleep in total darkness, so even the faint blue numbers were annoying me. I was off the Nox Sleep Light immediately – why would you create a sleep aiding lamp that throws lit-up numbers into the room that you can’t switch off?

Well, turns out you can – it’s just a little bit of navigating around the app. Yep, you need the Sleep Central app to make the Nox Sleep Light work. It basically hooks the light up to your WiFi, then lets you do stuff like set an alarm, set your preferences for the clock, and so on. Everything works from your phone – seem weird considering you’re meant to be getting OFF your phone? It is a little strange. I would kind of like more options for setting the light up each night without my phone, but I am also on my phone before bed anyway hahahahaha who am I kidding, I never put it down.

The alarm function is sick. Say you set an alarm for 7am. You can choose for the Nox Sleep Light to start waking you up from 6.40am. I know that sounds like madness – who wants to wake up EARLIER than they need to? But the genius here is the Nox Sleep Light veeeerry slooowly wakes you up with soft, yellow light at first that gradually, over twenty minutes, gets brighter and brighter as whatever alarm tone you choose (I went for the chirping birds) gets louder gradually, too.

This means you wake up with less of a jolt, something I’ve always hated about alarm clocks. In fact, the process is so smooth, there are mornings I don’t even feel that deep, soul-destroying pain at having to get out of bed. Seriously. There really is something to be said about waking up to natural light, even the mimicked kind.

But the real winner for me as I’ve trialled the Nox Sleep Light over the last month has been the falling asleep bit. You know how I said I can fall asleep okay, but I’m usually feeling a bit stressed? The best way to describe it is a very “on” feeling in my brain. It’s hard to wind down.

As much as I doubted a ~soft red light~ could possibly help in that area, it really… has? I have changed nothing else about my sleep routine besides popping on the red light as I settle in to sleep, and have noticed a huge difference in how quickly I nod off, as well as how restful my sleep is.

There is science behind this. According to Harvard Medical School, red light has the least power for shifting your circadian rhythm or suppressing melatonin. You want melatonin producing in your body as you settle down to sleep, by the way.

But it still seems wild that just using a warm, red light for sleep could actually change my experience so dramatically. Although, it’s not some 100% cure. I’ve had some nights where my sleep has been shit. But the difference is marked across the whole month.

Finally, the Nox Sleep Light lets you monitor your sleep. Now, I also had the A.H. Beard Sleep Dot, which attaches to your pillow case to monitor movement and so on. So my judgement on this part is a bit swayed by that, in fact it’s a lot swayed by that because each morning, the reporting I was given was for the most part based on what the Sleep Dot was saying.

Still, you can get all the same stats from your Nox Sleep Light each day, just maybe minus some of the accuracy around movement. It’ll tell you how humid your room is. The temperature through the night. When noise levels dipped and peaked.

A look at one of my sleeps

There are tips throughout for optimum room temp, noise and so on. The app is basically your spirit guide for sleeping better.

So, would I buy it? Absolutely yes. I’ve never been so sure that I would purchase something I’ve trialled for work (besides Dyson vacuum cleaners, they really are primo). It’s not cheap – the A.H Beard Nox Sleep Light retails for $249. But that’s also the price of a really fancy lamp, so there’s that.

I guess it’s just improved my sleep routine and my waking up routine to the degree where I’d be willing to make it my expensive buy of the month, and just not do any other shopping, lol.

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