Most of us rely on a certain amount of routine in our lives to keep things feeling normal and to maintain our flow, but it’s fair to say that life this last year has been a bit disruptive to trying to keep a standard schedule going.
In some cases, the problem might be a small change in your routine, meaning that you don’t get as much time on your commute to wake up and engage your brain before work.
In other cases, your schedule will be totally broken with needs like childcare meaning you can’t do things at the same time of day anymore.
And for just about all of us, our natural and preferred cycles of life are different, which means we struggle for energy, or don’t get to sleep so easily.
There’s no magic solution for all of this, but there are things that can help, and one of them is smart lighting from Philips Hue. By changing the light around you, you can help your body get into the mode you want it to be in, even when your timing has been pushed out of whack – and it’s really easy to do using the pre-made ‘Recipes’ that Philips Hue offers.
For example, a wake-up light can help you to wake up from sleep more smoothly and naturally, and to feel more energised when you do. Add the Philips Hue White Ambiance Dimmable Globe Filament Bulb to your bedroom and you can use the Hue Labs Personal wake up formula to tell the light to start coming on – first dimly, but getting brighter over time – just before your alarm clock. You can set the light it puts out to mimic sunlight, so you get a natural awakening right at the time you want it.
If you don’t have a commute any more and are missing the time outdoors for getting into a working mode in the morning, trying eating breakfast in a room with a Hue light set to the ‘Energise’ recipe, which is designed to help get the body feeling ready for taking on tasks.
Using Hue hulbs such as the Philips Hue White Ambiance Dimmable Classic Filament Bulb pictured here, you can change all the lights in a single fitting together with a tap in the app, or adjust them individually.
If you find that you or your kids need to do work at odd hours – especially when it’s dark outside – then setting up a lamp such as the Philips Hue White and Colour Ambiance Signe LED Table Lamp and using Hue’s ‘Concentrate’ mode can give a welcome boost to your productivity. It’s made to help stimulate the mind, keeping you in a mode where it’s easier to focus and get your work done.
And it’s not just about getting things done – it’s also about relaxing. All of the lights above above, and any other Philips Hue products, offer full control over the brightness and tone of the light, so you can create a dramatic colour scheme for hanging out in the evenings, or use the ‘Read’ recipe for a perfect lighting tone for some chilled-out time with a book.
When it comes to the evenings, there’s also the ‘Relax’ lighting mode that Philips Hue offers to help you feel less stressed and perhaps more likely to have a restful sleep. And even if you don’t go with a recipe, bulbs such as the Philips Hue White Ambiance Dimmable Classic Filament Bulb can be set simply to dim their light either manually or automatically, so you can have a nice low level of lighting while you wind down.
The really handy thing is that everything we’ve suggested here can be scheduled, so you can set a Wake Up recipe for your bedroom to trigger automatically on weekdays, set the ‘Concentrate’ mode to activate at your usual time to start work, and the ‘Relax’ mode to come on at 7pm every evening, say.
And that can all be set for different lights in different rooms, or for those who are having to spend most of their time in the same couple of rooms, it can help to transform the feel of the place as you switch between your different modes there.
At John Lewis & Partners, you’ll find that Philips Hue has a huge range of lights, from lamps to individual bulbs for different fittings, so you can make Hue smart lighting work in your home, whatever your setup and whatever budget you want to start with. And when you buy from John Lewis & Partners, you get a two-year guarantee included as standard.
And it's not just Hue bulbs that can help – setting up your rooms with a regular Philips LED bulb with the right colour temperature can help to make that space a haven: the Philips LED Candle Light Bulb, Frosted in warm white can turn a reading room into calming space of gentle warm light before bed.
There’s a lot we don’t have control of right now, but at least our homes are places we can make positive change, using tools like Philips Hue to take more control and make the days feel a little easier.
