The benefits of smart lighting

Over the past decade, technology has evolved in ways that still at times leaves us all speechless, that revolution has changed our lifestyle and snuck up into our daily lives. In this modern era, one of the most efficient and reliable sources of energy is light, which plays a prominent and major part within each day.

Remember that time Thomas Edison created the incandescent light in 1879? That was impactful and revolutionary. Who knew that in the 21st century, we can use just our voice for light activation or set times to control lights within our home environment?

The introduction to smart lighting has made advanced changes in unimaginable ways. In fact, smart lighting has a lot of benefits and features that impacts our overall lives in a more positive way.

Are you ready to make these positive changes? If so, this article provides an in-depth view of the positives and also a guide to smart lighting implication within your home environment.

Smart Lighting & Sleep Cycle

To be able to get a good night’s sleep is extremely important for your health. It is even more important that when you wake up in the morning, you have had a restful sleep.

The SunnyBrook Research Institute declared the importance of sleep for our physical and mental health. But, unfortunately many adults struggle with insufficient and poor-quality sleep, sleep disorders, and sleep apnea. These common contributions within a person’s life can have a significant impact within their lives and towards their health.

During this pandemic we have become accustomed to staying home, and with lockdowns, we didn’t leave our homes unless it was essential. The COVID-19 crisis started a shock wave, that uncertainty and its damaging impact left the world in devastation. There were many factors that created fear and worry that disrupted individuals sleep schedules. A poor sleep schedule can lead to lasting health conditions physically and mentally.

The Canadian Health Guidelines recommend 7-9  hours of sleep at night for ages between 18- 64. To include, one in two adults have trouble going to sleep or staying asleep and one in five adults do not find their sleep refreshing. However, you can improve your sleep significantly with implementing smart lighting within your environment.

Philips SmartSleep 

Invest in the Philips SmartSleep because it is clinically proven to work, and improve user’s general wellbeing, the wake-up light on this helps improve the quality of sleep. Users will wake up feeling refreshed and with an improved mood, which will allow users to find it easier to get out of bed, and find themselves motivated to start their day.

This product will start off with a red light and gradually shift to orange and then the room is filled with a bright yellow, which creates a natural stimulation and is the perfect alarm clock to invest in.

By the time the natural light has filled the room, users can choose the sound or music that they can wake up to or a favourite local FM radio station. The brightness level of lighting can be adjusted and can be used as a regular light lamp.

As for sound and music, it will start to play softly before the alarm and the volume level gradually increases.

While it is designed to help wake users up, the sunset feature is designed to help users sleep and the decreasing light and sound is designed to provide relaxation and helps with breathing.

Tunable White Light

When starting out, it can become a struggle to figure out what lighting you should look out for or what kind of lighting might impact a space, certain bulb features used within your environment really matter.

President and CEO of Moonshot Automation, Carmine Malesta has more than 33 years of experience with smart technology.

This smart automation company was founded in 1997, located in Mississauga, Ontario. This is your one stop to receive the right guidance by specialists that are serving clients in the Greater Toronto Area and will help elevate your life and health with recommendation of the right light features for your home environment. You will receive information regarding customization of lighting control and energy saving products that will provide a long-lasting impact.

“There are two parts to LED lights, one there is LED which is the light emitting diode that is what makes the light and two there is a little transformer inside that LED light, that little transformer takes AC power and converts it to DC,” Malesta said.

“Light emitting diode (LED) lights consume very little power but most LED lights have transformers built into them, but the common problem is that it takes it down from 120 volts AC to 24 volts DC.”

The Environmental Lights  is an LED light manufacturing company that works with Moonshot Automation. They provide LED lights that don’t have a driver built into them. The drivers separate down in utility and the driver that is made for environmental lights is a commercial driver which does not break. Moonshot Automation company understands the steps that need to be taken to provide efficient lighting.

“We lived before we had electricity, we relied on the sun for life, in the morning when the sun rises, it is at a certain temperature around 2,000 kelvin and by midday the sun has been about 5,000 to 6,000 kelvin,” Malesta said.

When the sun goes down it is back to 2,000 kelvin, and our body releases something called melatonin. Melatonin is what tells our body to go to sleep and that is why it is advised to avoid devices before sleeping because the body won’t release as much melatonin.

“Environmental Lights make these LED lights that are tunable, which is the white light, the first thing in the morning is around 2,000 kelvin and then it changes temperature as the time progresses, the lights inside your house will mimic the sunlight outside,” Malesta said.

“The use of tunable lights in places where seniors may suffer Dementia and Alzhimer’s disease and it is proven that when these tunable white lights are used in health centres, these people get better sleep in the night and they’re less temperamental in the day,” Malesta said.

Tunable lighting also is known to provide many health benefits, supports circadian rhythm natural cycle, helps with mental health and provides support during the winter months. It promotes assistance within a learning workplace and becomes beneficial for night shift workers and jetlag travellers and others.

Moonshot Automation knows how to incorporate these LED lights by Environmental Lights and are designed to help those that are interested in tunable lighting and provide assistance on how it can be done.

Youtuber The Brad Lloyd  – Nanoleaf Essentials

There are many budget friendly products out there that can transform the mood of any space, the coloured lights are capable of changing the lights temperature and provide an industry standard of 16 million colour options.

Brad Lloyd fascination for technology has driven his content to be based on smart products that can make lives easier and is inspired by the magic of a small ecosystem of smart products such as colour bulbs, smart switches, light strips and sensors that work together to create scenes and automations.

“I would recommend Nanoleaf Essentials A19 light bulb and LED light strip which are both now thread-enabled meaning their responsiveness and reliability increased and both quality products are also cost effective ” Lloyd said.

The Nanoleaf Essential A19 provides many beneficial features, the process of installing is easy and supports the industry standard of 16 million colours and provides users with a wide range of colours selection. The white colour temperature range is between 2700-6500K and the max brightness has the ability to hit 1,000 lumens. Users can wake up naturally to the sunrise colours or set other schedules in Nanoleaf App. The A19 can be paired with the Nanoleaf App, IOS Home App and Google Home App and can be voice controlled by using Apple HomeKit and Google Assistant.

The Nanoleaf light strip is the perfect option to invest in if users are interested in lighting up any home decor appliances. The design is the small controller integrated into it, which is convenient because it can be controlled without smart control. It is easy to set up and is compatible with Apple’s Home and Google Assistant. It provides a brightness of 2,000 lumens and similarly to the bulb provides a wide range of colour selection.

Users will need HomePod mini to get the benefits of Thread, however this can work via bluetooth.

One important and key factor of both these Nanoleaf lights is that it doesn’t heat up or get hot like incandescent lights, Nanoleaf lights are designed to stay cool to touch at all times.

Lloyd recommends the Philips Hue

“Higher end products such as the Philips Hue White & Colour Ambiance A19 and Philips LED Light Strip which connect using Zigbee Protocol and the benefit of this is that it does not use bandwidth or slow down Wi-Fi network,” Lloyd said.

“IOS 14 brought us adaptive lighting which is a feature that automatically adjusts the lighting temperature of smart lights throughout the day and works with colour or ambient lighting products such as Philips Hue and Nanolaf Essentials.”

The Philips Hue A19 white & colour bulbs light provides users upto 16 million colours of selection and provides soothing warm and cool tone light. The brightness level is adjustable and it is compatible with Amazon Alexa, IFTTT and Google Assistant. The lighting of the bulb can also be controlled via Bluetooth or voice commands.

As for the Philips Hue Plus V4 Smart LED lightstrip, it can be shaped and cut to fit any room, and allows a selection of 10 lights ranging with colours including white light that can suit your temperature and mood. This is compatible with using the app or voice.

“LED bulbs consume less power per lumen than incandescent or CFL and produce less heat and are safer to use, it has the ability to reduce energy consumption using automations and smart plugs to reduce the phantom power that accessories consume when plugged in but not in use.” Lloyd said.

“I enjoy the ability to monitor and control lights remotely. LED lights are also made of non-toxic materials and are 100% recyclable.”

Smart lights are designed to add value to most families, they are functional and can save time, money and bring forth convenience for the busy families.

“An example from my family is my 6 year old son who always forgets to shut his room lights off and for another family perhaps they have an older loved one who would benefit from some automated low light when getting up in the middle of the night,” Lloyd said.

Smart light designed to help with mental health

The features on both these smart lighting products provide the wide range of colours, adjustable tones which will become beneficial for people of all ages. Many smart light products are known to reduce stress and provide a more relaxed environment such as VOCOlinc colour light strips.

“The VOCOlinc FlowerBud Smart diffuser can diffuse essential oils, omit colour light and can be controlled by HomeKit,” Lloyd said.

It is also compatible and works with Alexa and Google. With 16 million colours that are designed to set the mood and work with the different aromas that users select. For instance, the light green for a mint essential oil and a pink light for cherry blossoms. It is a unique and creative way to bring comfort to your home. The FlowerBud provides a 300ml capacity tank and will keep users’ home scent fresh. Users can use the VOCOlinc app to control the FlowerBud, whether that is regarding the mist control, color effects for the mood light or preparing a schedule, everything can be controlled remotely that can provide users with full control for keeping their home adjusted to a pleasant aroma of their liking.

To start your journey of adapting smart lights within your home, start with one room at a time, and smart switches are a great investment if the light temperature and colour wants to be kept consistent. Overtime with every addition of smart lighting towards your home, it will get smarter which would allow you to explore scenes, automation and accessories such as motion sensors that can automatically trigger lights when someone enters the room or opens the door. The products that you invest in have the ability to benefit your daily life and provide assistance where needed.