Simplify your Bedtime Routine with Philips Hue

The post was sponsored by Philips Hue via Momtrends Media.  The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are not indicative of the opinions of Philips Hue or Momtrends Media.

Finding a bedtime routine that works for your family can make your nights (and mornings) go so much smoother. With 6 kids in our house, bedtime is a bit of a marathon. Fortunately, thanks to Philips Hue Smart Lighting, we’ve found a solution that dramatically simplifies bedtime stress.

With the start of a new school year, it’s also time to say goodbye to summer sleep habits and get back into a normal bedtime routine. Suddenly the days of staying up late and sleeping in are replaced with bedtime fights and grumpy mornings. Philips Hue is a smart lighting system with the capability of making bedtime a lot more enjoyable for everyone involved.

By making it simple to set the mood in a room with a change of lighting, kids have a much easier time transitioning to an earlier bedtime. It is truly amazing what a difference screwing in some standard sized lightbulbs and plugging in a small hub have made to our nightly routine.

My 6 yr old consistently wants to stay up past her bedtime. It seems like every night she has some reason why she can’t sleep in her bed.

“I need a drink.”
“I want to sleep in your bed.”
“My dolly needs a drink.”

You get the idea.

Since she was little, the best way to calm her down before bedtime has been reading her a story in her room. She loves the one-on-one time and the act of listening to a story really helps to calm her down.

Philips Hue smart lighting easily takes that routine to the next level.

We’ve been using Philips Hue in our home for several years, but we just added it to the bedrooms and it has been an amazing addition because of the way it simplifies our bedtime routine.

Using the Hue App on our smartphone, we programmed the lights in my daughter’s bedroom fixtures to turn a fun shade of green at 7:30 pm. This is her alert that it is time to start getting ready for bed.

The room stays green for 15 mins before fading to the “Read” light recipe, a white color of light designed to make reading easy on the eyes. She knows that is her time to pick a book to read.

As her story time ends, the Hue lights are programmed to fade into the pre-set “Relax” scene for the next 10 mins.

She has learned that scene means that she doesn’t have to go to bed quite yet but she has to stay in her bed. This makes it fun for her to be there and prevents her thinking up excuses to get out and get things like a drink of water.

Her favorite time is after she has relaxed and is now ready to go to sleep. Her lights are currently programmed to change to a nice pink tone that is dimmed to a 20% light level.

Periodically, she enjoys asking Siri to change her nightlight to any of 16 million colors. She often picks a blue or purple. With a voice enabled speaker in her room, it is a simple as her saying “Siri, turn Leah’s room blue. Dim to 20%.

Because she is still a bit afraid of the dark (even if she won’t admit it) we leave the lights like that until about midnight when we schedule them to go off on their own.

I love knowing we can set her lights and forget about them, but we don’t have to worry about her waking up in the dark and having to start the bedtime routine all over again.

This simple thing has made such a difference in our bedtime routine and dramatically lowered the stress level in our home at night. The Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance starter kit is the first thing I recommend to friends when I hear they are having a hard time getting their kids to go to sleep at night.

The first few weeks of school have been a bit stressful at our house, but I love knowing that getting kids to bed at night doesn’t have to add to the craziness around here.

Getting kids to bed without a fight means everyone is a lot more rested in the morning and I know my daughter is getting the sleep she needs in order to do well at school the next day.