Calling all mums who use NIGHTLIGHTS for their children- PLEASE READ!

[bexyboo87]

Hi all mums!

Im a design student at university, and for my major project i am designing a new innovative nightlight to help with children's sleep disorders and also to help children go back to sleep if they have woken up in the middle of the night. This light will also be interactive, so the light can be used as they grow up.

Why do you use a nightlight? Does it help your child sleep better?

Do you think certain colours and patterns of light/ sounds would help your child sleep better?

What kind of thing would you like the light to be able to do, for when the child is older?-
1.colour changing- activated by the child
2.storytelling?
3.music playing?

1. educational?

Any suggestions?

Many thanks for your help.

nightlight is more for us than her, if she stirs in the night and we went in and put the main light on she would be wide awake but nightlight is dim enough to see her and waht we are doing without waking her fully. i think she would sleep in the dark.
nothing stimulating would work as it would wake them too much.

Hi bexy.

A light that was rechargeable so as it did not go out suddenly in a powercut might be worth thinking about.
I was terrified of the dark when young and I remember my teddy shaped light going off suddenly.

Good luck with your design.

dd is 15m

her nightlight is so I do not break my neck in the dark

it helps her sleep better in that I am not prostrate on her floor going 'OW my bloody TOE' at 4am

atm when she wakes at night I feed her and she goes straight back to sleep - if you can get a nightlight to do that I am buying

however I certainly do not want her stimulated or interacted with at 4am, much less educated

we find a cd player to be quite good at playing music

we had one that had a "fade" button that went out gradually over about 10 mins.

That was very good.

Sorry i forgot to be specific- the interactive part of the light, for use as the child is growing up would not be used when he/she is sleeping. It will be used early evening, before bed etc.

Many thanks

hi!
my son loves his nightlight, i thought he would be done with it by now (he's 4) but he insists..i think it is a comfort light really..

i would like to see a really eco friendly energy nightlight, using minimum of energy..and as GO mentioned something that could continue after power cut is great idea

nothing too stimulating i agree and music seems a bad idea i would think..

good luck, lets see your final design!

DS needs one as at 2.5 he is scared of the dark

One that fades off as the sun comes out would be good so electricity isn't wasted

i don't want interaction etc - 3 am is not a good time for stimulation

DD1 used to sleep in the dark but as she has gotten older, she is now 5, she says she is scared of the dark. atm she goes to sleep with 2 nightlights and a lamp. Once she has fallen asleep I turn the lamp and one nightlight off.

The one we use for dd2 is more for us, pretty much along the same lines of what ilovetochat said.

My DD is four and will start screaming if she wakes and finds our nightlight light is off. I have no idea how she became so afraid of the dark as she always slept in total darkness as a baby and this only started when she was about 2.5. I would find it helpful to have a nightlight with variable settings so I can gradully reduce the amount of light she is leaving on so one day we could get back to normal, dark room. And one that is low energy so is greener and cheaper to run. Rechargeable would be good, but none I have found so far can last 12 hours and they have broken within weeks of use. Colour settings nice and relaxing but don;t feel the need for storeis/music/interaction. Too many other products do those things well already if you are into that.

so this is a nightlight plus a lullaby light show-type thing plus story and/or music cd?

I see

hmm

the trick will be getting new parents to buy it over a cheaper single function box - when they're 8wks and you'll try anything to make them sleep a 15quid lullaby light show is worth a go. A 40quid all-singing box sounds more like an expensive mistake, esp when they realise there is nothing that will make an 8wkold sleep...

Oh I forgot to mention that the lights that we use (well the ones that stay one during the night) have sensors on them so once I draw the curtains they go off so no electricity is being used.

A light that uses minimal electricity and does not rely on batteries. I would love one that came on when ds cried and then faded slowly after 20 mins or so (ds is scared of the dark but I don't want him sleeping with a light on all night).

Not really interested in story telling or music. Although one of ds's cot toys had a function where I could record myself on it. So maybe an option to have it say something pre-recorded when it came on in the middle of the night - to help soothing.

I think it can be difficult to see in different colours. Soft yellow seems best - not too harsh and enough to see by.

Thankyou all for your posts.

It is interesting how a lot of you mentioned sensors, as that is how my light will work. When the light is activated by motion, it will come on to help the parent see in the bedroom, and also the child if he or she is getting up to go to the bathroom for example. the light will also come on, slightly differently when activated by sound-the cries of a child etc. It will come on softer, more soothing, to comfort.
The light will have timers so it turns off after a time, set by the parent.

This is the main part of my project.

However im trying to research to find if parents think a portable nightlight would be more beneficial to the child rather than a plug in the wall light?

Thankyou

or a combination like the Go Glow or whwtever they are

my dd has A LUMILOVE nightlight. You plug in and charge during the day. It lasts on average 8 hours, but I find it lasts longer but not very bright.

This is a alittle rabbit with poseable limbs and the body glows different colours
Red,yellow, green and white (I THINK)
My dd is 21 months and has only had the nightlight about 2 weeks.
Can sleep in the dark, but she has recently moved to a bed from cot. So it was also for our benefit, like mentioned so I could see when she fell out of bed in the night etc....

However I have a baby monitor in her room which has a night light on it, plus can be contolled from downstairs to play lullabyes..

Bexy re your question of having it portable - IMO an ideal solution would be a reachargable light - that you can use if its plugged in but then can use it 'stand alone' if need be, running on stored energy. Ones that need disposable batteries are a pain.

One that usually is blue or whatever colour is supposed to be best for sleeping, but turns green at a time set by the parents so the child knows they can get up now.

Though DS is 3, we still use our baby monitor here so we can chat to him and reassure him from our room. It has three little orange star lights on it that he likes to have on. They help him not to be scared of the dark, but they are very dim - too bright and he wouldn't sleep. So whatever you do needs to have a dim setting, I think.

It does play lullabies and he's enjoyed that at times.

The lights are just static, not moving and I think that would keep him awake too.

I instinctively feel orange/golden/pink is nice and warm and cosy - don't like the idea of blue, though I might be wrong.

We have always used nightlights - first to avoid the toe stubbing scenario referred to above and now to avoid waking up in pitch darkness (probably don't really need it any more but a kind of habit!)

We always have had the kind of plug in nightlight you can buy in a hardware store for less than a fiver that goes off when you draw the curtains, comes on when it is dark.

You don't need any other fancy trickery to acheive the aim of not having a completely dark room and I would say the market for all singing all dancing comforting light thingies is probably very overcrowded already. Sorry to be a negative voice but sometimes you can over engineer a solution to a simple problem.

I think 1 that u can use a timer. when my friends child was older she set the light for a certain time in the morning and he was allowed to get out of bed and play but he wasnt allowed to come out room n roam the house waking everyone else until the light went off. he loved the idea as did his parents!!!

also when my daughter is teething she can whinge abit when putting her down but we have these lights that change colour and she falls asleep straight away watching the colours change.

I like the idea of the light fading tho as we always have to go in n turn these off ones shes droped off.

Hi

We have two different kinds of nightlights:

Both my boys have 'MoodBeams' (from IWOOT or Firebox websites) which double as toys but have the advantage that they go off after 10 mins if left alone. They have various modes, the best of which is the one where they fade between different colours in a set sequence. I don't like the flashing mode!

My younger son (who is very afraid of the dark) has a Moonlight eco-friendly nightlight, which does plug into the mains socket but is supposed to take very little energy. It stays on all night.

Ideally I'd like one that was rechargeable, without batteries, just as Whizz said. I don't really like ds2 fiddling around with the socket which is what he does if he's a bit too awake at bedtime. And I don't like having to replace the batteries in the MoodBeams.

Any interactive features wouldn't be approved of in this household. My boys are rather distractable and I'd like anything near them to be very simple otherwise it would just prolong bedtime.

Yeh colours need to fade in to eachother, id imagine flashing would be horrible!!

A rechargeable one, which turned itself off/faded out after a period so once they were sound asleep, the room was dark (which is best for proper brain rest isn't it IIRC?) Mimimal branding and graphics.

The parent could adjust the glow on it from faint to strong. It would have a slight luminescence/standby light so the child could find it in the dark and re-light it if they woke up/needed the toilet.

A development of those IKEA SPOKA lights would be the kind of thing, ours has long lost the ability to recharge and they are not very robust.

I would love a nightlight for DS where there is some control over the brightness. He's 4, and scared of sleeping in the dark. I can't turn his light off when he's asleep as he will be petrified if he wakes up. A 'normal' nightlight isn't bright enough, his bedside light is too bright.

I don't think a nightlight for an older child should do anything. It's supposed to help them sleep, not keep them entertained!

HTH.