Summary
- A smart thermostat can not only keep your bedroom as comfortable as you need it, when you need it, but cut the cost of your power bills.
- Smart lights by companies like Philips Hue and Nanoleaf can help set a better mood, or wind you down before you go to sleep.
- Don’t underestimate the value of a smartwatch for things like silent alarms or checking the time in the middle of the night.
As I write this, summer is rapidly coming to a close in Edmonton. While I’m looking forward to putting away the giant AC units my wife and I use, that means there’s a looming threat on the horizon: the specter of winter. Temperatures here can sometimes fall below -20 Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit), and in the depths of the season, the sun sets so early that I’m often still working by the time it gets dark. I haven’t even touched on the problem of snow and ice — let’s just say I’m upset that I won’t be able to ride my electric unicycle for months.
Keeping our bedroom comfortable can be a challenge sometimes, both physically and psychologically, especially if our son gets scared and needs to crawl under the covers. Thankfully, modern smart home tech is here to the rescue, combined with my personal favorite smartwatch. The significance of a watch is going to make sense, I promise.
Ecobee Smart Thermostat Enhanced
Keeping the heat on track
I sometimes argue that the one smart home accessory everyone should own is a smart thermostat. While the better models are expensive upfront, they can actually save you money in the long run, since they do wonders at improving the efficiency of heating and cooling. It’s not just about setting a timetable, either — they optimize when your equipment turns on and off — for instance, relying on occupancy detection and weather data. As a consequence, smart thermostats also tend to be excellent at ensuring that by the time I climb into bed, the temperature is exactly where I need it to be to fall asleep.
Smart thermostats tend to be excellent at ensuring that by the time I climb into bed, the temperature is exactly where I need it to be to fall asleep.
My model of choice at the moment is the Ecobee Smart Thermostat Enhanced. It lacks the air quality and smart speaker functions of the Smart Thermostat Premium, but it natively integrates with Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, and Google Home, which means I can control it with just about any device I own.
Price-wise, I think it hits the sweet spot — if you dip down to Ecobee’s Essential model, you lose occupancy detection and support for HVAC accessories like dehumidifiers and ventilators, which could be deal-killers depending on your living situation.
Nanoleaf Blocks
A much-needed splash of color
It might seem strange to include Nanoleaf light panels in a piece about comfort, since they’re more often associated with gaming dens, home theaters, or ultra-swank restaurants. But a splash of color goes a long way towards making a bedroom feel pleasant, especially if you can change schemes on the fly to fit your mood. Blues and purples help me wind down at the end of the day — warmer colors are great for waking up, or alleviating seasonal depression when I miss the sun. Synced animations keep things from getting stale.
Nanoleaf makes a variety of different panel types, but the Blocks are my personal favorite, at least at the moment. They look good in just about any space, and you can even mount shelves and pegboards on them, although I wouldn’t rest anything heavier than headphones or a small plant. Sturdiness is my only major complaint, in fact — the mounting strips Nanoleaf supplies in the box just aren’t enough to prevent panels from falling down. I’d strongly suggest adding more to your wall, like ties or hidden support nails.
While I’m at it, I’d also recommend using the Nanoleaf app for control most of the time. The panels do connect to Alexa, HomeKit, and Google Home, but you’ll miss out on Nanoleaf’s custom lighting patterns, which get occasional refreshes to boot.
Philips Hue light bulbs
The surefire nightstand solution
Speaking of lighting, the choice of smart bulbs for our nightstands was always going to be Philips Hue. The brand can be expensive, but it’s worth the cost for a few reasons: superior colors, support for every major ecosystem, and most importantly, high reliability thanks to the Zigbee-equipped Hue Bridge. The Hue app makes it relatively simple to set up complex automations that run without a hitch. In fact, if I have any trouble, it’s usually with Alexa or HomeKit — nothing on Philips Hue’s end.
I sometimes consider upgrading to White and Color — but then I realize how seldom it is that I want my nightstand to be anything but a warm white.
There are many, many Hue bulbs to pick from. For a bedroom, it’s usually best to choose between the company’s 810-lumen White Ambiance or White and Color Ambiance bulbs, depending on your budget. We use the cheaper White Ambiance bulbs, which are limited to “shades” of white ranging from a cool blue tint to a warm orange. They’re more than enough, no matter the time of day or year, mostly because the Nanoleaf Blocks produce enough color for the rest of the space. I sometimes consider upgrading to White and Color — but then I realize how seldom it is that I want my nightstand to be anything but a warm white.
If you want to get creative, you might consider trying some of the company’s White Ambiance Filament bulbs, but you’ll have to crank their brightness way down. Because they’re transparent, they’re completely blinding at full power.
Google Nest Hub (second-generation)
Tying it all together
While phone apps and scheduled automations may be enough for controlling smart home accessories, a bedroom really deserves some form of smart speaker or display. If nothing else, it’s far more convenient to say “set the bedroom lights to 50%” or “turn the thermostat to 19 degrees” than it is to unlock a phone and tap through to the right sliders. I certainly don’t want to futz with my phone when I’m already tucked in, or trying to play a game on my Steam Deck.
My Nest Hub serves a couple of additional purposes. For one thing, it enables Google Home to work with Matter and Thread, two of the most important smart home protocols at the moment. The other is casting video — I I like to watch YouTube videos as I fall asleep, and the Nest Hub has built-in Google Cast compatibility. Sometimes I’ll even put on a movie, and you’d be surprised at how easy it is to fall asleep to Commando, Rocky IV, or Conan the Barbarian. I may be a bit too desensitized to 1980s action flicks.
Apple Watch Ultra 2
An unlikely sleep aid?
The sleep tracking on the Ultra 2 is an indirect aid to comfort, at best. If I notice there was a major disruption overnight, that may be a sign that I was too hot, too cold, or struggling with restless leg syndrome — but typically, I don’t need a smartwatch to reveal those things. It just reminds me to do something about it when I wake up the next morning.
The screen not only dims dramatically in the dark, but red-shifts to avoid impacting my night vision.
So why is the Ultra 2 on this list, then? Two things: silent alarms, and its display. To get my work done at a reasonable time, I set my weekday alarm for 5:20, which is way before my wife gets up. The Ultra 2’s vibration motor is powerful enough to jolt me awake without any music or lights going off in the room. I could probably stand to dial it back, given how often I’m startled. As for the screen, it not only dims dramatically in the dark, but red-shifts to avoid impacting my night vision. That’s perfect for when I wake up in the middle of the night and want to check the time without rolling over or picking up my phone.
There is one other perk, but that’s relative to other Apple Watches: battery life. The Ultra 2 lasts long enough that even with two-hour workouts and overnight wear, charging it once a day for 30 minutes or so leaves ample power to spare. Frankly, I’d be annoyed by how often I’d have to charge a Series 11.
- Brand
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Apple
- Heart Rate Monitor
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Electrical and optical
