Smart bedroom
Find out how bedroom-friendly tech can help make your bed more comfortable, stop you snoring, wake you up more easily in the morning, and tell you what you need to know for the day before you’ve even moved a muscle
We know what you’re thinking: isn’t adding tech to your bedroom the exact opposite of expert advice about sleep hygiene? Well fear not, there’s plenty of tech that’s designed to help your sleep nowadays, not hinder it. And for that reason, the bedroom is fast becoming one of the most important spaces in your modern-day smart home. If you’ve got cash to burn, then go all out and smarten up the most important part of your bedroom: your bed. The Sleep Number 360 i7 Smart Bed ($3,199/£2,363, sleepnumber.com) comes complete with a cooling memory-foam mattress, which contours and adjusts to how both you and your partner sleep. The bed gets its smart credentials because it can sense your movements throughout the night. Based on how you’re sleeping, it automatically makes adjustments by changing comfort levels, adjusting support and firming up in the places where you really need it.
If you can’t justify giving your whole bed an overhaul, invest in a sleep tracker that’ll arm you with insights about how you’re sleeping and serve up suggestions about what habits you could change instead. The most accurate trackers are those that sit on your bed, because they’re better at detecting small movements throughout the night. We like the Eight Sleep Tracker ($399/£281.45, eightsleep.com), which fits over your mattress like a protector layer, and doesn’t just track your sleep, but also has a temperature control feature to keep you cool or turn up the heat, depending on the season and how you prefer to sleep. For those who take automating their tech seriously, 1 Nokia Health’s Nokia Sleep (£99.95, health.nokia.com) is a perfect solution. It tracks your sleep, your heart rate and your snoring throughout the night, so you can comb through the data and learn more about what’s causing your sleep problems. But it also syncs up to IFTTT, which means you can control your other smart home devices depending on your sleep cycle. Choose to dim your lights at bedtime or turn on the heating when you wake up, for example.
If you’ve got a snoring problem, or your partner is driving you round the bend, there’s now a way to stop it causing too many sleepless nights. The 2 Smart Nora ($299/£220, smartnora.com) fits inside your pillow and gently vibrates when it senses you snoring. The thinking behind the product is that this movement then stimulates your throat muscles, enabling you to breathe more normally and, hopefully, stop snoring.
If your sleeping pattern feels totally out of sync and you’re not nodding off easily, sleeping soundly or waking up feeling at all refreshed, then try a 3 Philips Hue (from £59.99, meethue.com) setup. These smart lighting solutions (they come as bulbs or even lamps) can be programmed to bathe your bedroom in light and simulate sunset and sunrise at the right times. This can help establish a more natural sleep routine you have a better chance of sticking to, which can leave you feeling more alert during the day, improve your overall health and, most importantly, give you a better night’s sleep.
Alternatively, you can hide your smart lighting in your furniture if you’d prefer. The IKEA Surte/Besta (£559, ikea.com) is a stylish, minimal storage unit that’ll look great in any bedroom. As an added bonus, its top tiers have smart LED lighting built into the door. This means you can easily add in any of IKEA’s Trådfri wireless remote-controlled LED lights in order to create soft lightscapes for the most serene, sleep-inducing bedroom experience.
If it’s not drifting off to sleep that’s causing you problems, but you’re a serial snoozer and have trouble getting up in the morning, put an 4 Amazon Echo Spot (£119.99, amazon.co.uk) in your bedroom. There are a range of commands you can ask Alexa to carry out for more manageable mornings, from playing energising music to wake you up and set you up for the day, through to setting a series of alarms so you’ll never be caught out again. Just think of her as your personal wake-up assistant. She could even make you a coffee, if you have an Alexa-connected machine…
If you prefer a more traditional alarm clock, get yourself a modern one that’s been revived for the state-of-the-art smart home. We love the 5 Beddi Glow SE (£TBC, wittidesign.com), a smart alarm clock, colour-changing wake-up light and Bluetooth speaker all rolled into one great-looking device.
A smart bed senses your movements and automatically makes adjustments