Did you get into the Monday all right? Mondays are usually the hardest to get up in the morning for me, especially when it’s still dark outside. I guess I’m not the only one with this problem though right? However, just recently getting up in the morning got a thousand times lighter. Why is this you’re wondering? Well, last week I got the WiZ connected lighting and it’s one of those items that I now don’t understand how I was living without it for all those years.
I was always a little reluctant to try out Smart lighting. I’m not the biggest tech fan, and setting up my printer was more than enough to get through this month. But, I have always been curious, and I have to tell you, the installation was super straightforward. The Wiz lamps* work with the WiZ app, where you create rooms, add lamps and connect them with your Wifi network (Bluetooth is also possible). So, just 15 minutes after I took the lamps out of the box, I was playing with all the different light modes, because the possibilities are endless.
I set up WiZ lights in both my bedroom and my office, the two rooms where I spend most of my time and where I can get the most benefits from them. In my bedroom, I placed a full color spectrum LED bulb* in my rice-paper-shade and the Wiz table lamp* on the bedside table. You can set a multitude of scenes and rhythms for your lamps, but in the bedroom, I mostly use the wake-up and bedtime routines.
Wiz wake up mode
The wake-up routine turns the light on slowly over a period of 30 minutes, just like the sun would and the experience of waking up compared to the alarm clock is infinitely better. At the beginning of the 30 minutes, the light is more magenta, while towards the end, it’s brighter and more yellow like at sunrise. I usually wake up about 20 minutes in and let my eyes get used to the light. By the time the 30 minutes end, I’m ready to wake up. So much better than waking up with a dreadful alarm.
Wiz bedtime routine
While the Wiz connected smart lights help me the most when waking up in the morning, I use them to go to bed at night as well. Once I’m in bed, I turn on the bedtime routine, which allows me to read my book, yet the light gets more dim after a while, which makes me ready to put away my book and fall asleep.
Circadian Rhythm
In my office, I’m using the same combination of the full color spectrum smart bulbs and the Squire table lamp and I have them set to the Circadian Rhythm, which is aimed at replicating the natural changes of the sunlight throughout the day.
The light will gradually brighten in the morning, using cool white light, then it becomes more neutral and brighter during the day and dim and warmer in the evening (you can define when your day starts and ends in the WiZ app). As I have been working at my desk from dusk till down many days in the last weeks, it really helps to keep a sense of time. I usually have a feeling that it’s evening at 16h when the sun goes down here in Munich, and really get a dip in productivity, but the lights prevent this. And when I’m sitting at my desk when it’s dark out in the morning it gives the feeling the sun is already out. Such a game-changer.
Connectivity
Shortly said, I’m super happy with the WiZ connected lighting in both my bedroom and home office and can’t wait to get more lights in the other rooms of my apartment as well. I always tend to leave the light on in the hallway when I leave the house, so next, I will install the Wiz Motion sensor* by the door, so that the light can be on only when motion is detected. It will save energy and I don’t have to worry about switching off the lights when I’m leaving. It’s also possible to control the lights with voice control and I plan to try out using Google assistant with it.
This post was written in paid collaboration with WiZ connected lighting, but all opinions are my own of course. If you would like to know more about the products or have a look at more ideas on how to integrate them, have a look on their website. And don’t worry, you don’t have to be tech-savvy to be able to set up some pretty amazing scenes with the WiZ lighting. If I could do it, anyone can.