You’d Never Know My Bedside Lamp Is Also a White-Noise Machine and Sunrise Light
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Sometime last year, I decided to stop using my phone as analarm clock. I tried a tinyBraunand liked how it looked, but fiddling with the minuscule buttons every night felt tedious. Sometimes I’d just forget to set it. Also: Thebeep-beep-beepwas annoying. I needed a gentler start to the day.
I’d never considered asunrise alarm clockbefore; I personally don’t love the way many of them look. Then Tala, my favorite handsome-lightbulb-maker, released this sunrise light–white-noise machine–alarm-clock lamp. Almost immediately after getting it, I started waking up earlier and easier, even before the sound alarm went off — and I sleep with aweighted eye mask. I knew it really worked when my 3.5-year-old, who crawls into my bed every night and is usually so hard to wake up in the morning, no longer needed me to rouse her.
The day I received it, I couldn’t download the accompanying app (forgot my Apple password), so I set up the time and alarm manually by swiveling the top of the glazed ceramic base then pressing it down to make a selection. The display screen, on the lower part of the base, lights up with the time and other settings info. It was pretty straightforward to toggle through.
Once I downloaded the app, I really dove into the settings. I set up a weekly schedule — a rise time and a wind-down time. In the morning, the light turns on about 30 minutes before my set alarm, then my preferred sound starts: chirping birds. In the evenings, a dim light turns on for 30 minutes, followed by another half hour of brown noise. I chose not to keep the time visible; if I need to check it in the middle of the night, I press the base and it lights up for a few seconds. My one critique is that the display screen could have been a type of red light; it’sblue light, but I’ve dimmed the brightness on it.
I’ll note the price — it’s way more than a Braun and about $100 more than other sunrise alarms likethe Hatch(though comparable to the Loftie lamp) — but the quality and design are what appealed to me. To brighten or dim the light, you swivel the speckled ceramic base, which has a rippled shape, and the bulb, which has a wavy edge, emits the warmest, lowest glow I’ve seen. The app is very intuitive. Once I got things set up, I rarely needed to open it. It has helped me go to bed earlier (most nights) and wake feeling more rested (even for early mornings to the airport).
I had used my previous bedside light — a stone-base lamp fromAudo Copenhagen— for years. I love the warmth of its super-dim globe shade and how it looked in my minimal bedroom. Now it’s on the bed’s other side table, and the Tala, which was designed by British architecture firm Heatherwick Studio, has taken its place.
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