Circadian Wellness in The Smart Home

What Is Circadian Wellness?

Circadian wellness refers to aligning your body’s internal clock (known as your circadian rhythm) with your daily routine (such as when you go to sleep).

Light plays a crucial role in regulating your circadian rhythm. Being exposed to excessive artificial light (whether through a screen or a room’s lighting) can disrupt your body’s natural rhythm, which can then negatively impact your sleep, mood and overall health.

How Lighting Affects Circadian Rhythms

Lighting affects your circadian rhythm because your body recognises different light intensities and colours as signals for when you should wake, focus, relax and sleep.

For a regulated circadian rhythm, we want to see certain levels of light at particular times of day. Optimum lighting exposure would be:

1. Morning: Bright, blue-toned light to help promote wakefulness.
2. Afternoon: Natural light to sustain energy levels.
3. Evening: Warmer, dimmer tones that signal to the brain that it’s time to prepare for sleep.

Imagine the world before electricity. You naturally learnt to wake as the sun rose and would head to sleep as the night drew in. Nowadays, the existence of artificial light can disrupt our circadian rhythms because we’re seeing light at the wrong time of day. Circadian rhythm lights can combat the disruption and ensure that we’re being exposed to the right levels of the right type of light at the right time.

What Is Circadian Lighting?

Circadian lighting is artificial lighting (i.e. smart bulbs, tunable white lights, dynamic LED panels) that mimics natural patterns of daylight. It’s designed to support your internal circadian rhythm by changing colour temperature and intensity throughout the day.

How Smart Homes Enable Circadian Wellness

You can programme your home’s smart lighting to follow schedules that align with your circadian rhythm.

For example, you can create a routine where your lights will gradually fade in bright, blue-toned light to help you wake up.

Potential benefits of improving your circadian health include:

1. Greater sleep quality
2. Better focus during the day
3. Enhanced mood and energy levels

Examples of Circadian Rhythm Light Solutions

Several types of smart home technology can promote circadian wellness, including:

Tunable Smart Bulbs

You can programme smart bulbs to shift from cool to warm white light to replicate natural daylight patterns. Your bulbs can be bright and blue-toned when you need to wake up, and warmer and dimmer when it’s bedtime.

Automated Blinds and Shades

You can time your blinds to automatically open and close with the sun to reinforce circadian alignment. 

If the hours of natural light don’t align with the wake-up and wind-down times you need to suit your lifestyle, you can combine blackout blinds with smart lighting. The blackout blinds can keep the sun out to give you more rest, while smart lighting mimics the gentle wakening of natural light.

Sunrise Alarm Clocks

Swap your traditional noise-making alarm for one that emits lights to aid a gradual morning wake-up. You can use a sunrise alarm clock as a standalone device even if you don’t have smart lighting.

Whole-home Lighting Systems

As with many types of smart technology, it’s generally more effective when you use it across your entire home, rather than in just one area.

Even if the bedroom is the most crucial area, you’ll get the most out of your smart lighting by connecting it to home-wide set-ups. If you go for a professional-grade system, you’ll be able to explore full-spectrum lighting that’s connected to other technology and tailored to you. For example, you can have a system that dims your home's lights at the same time as cooling it.

Circadian Wellness Beyond Lighting

For the biggest impact, you can use smart lighting with additional smart technology for a well-rounded approach to circadian wellness.

Some other types of smart home technology that you can use include:

1. Temperature automation: Keeping your home cooler at night can encourage better sleep.
2. Soundscapes: Programme your smart speakers or voice assistant to automatically play audio cues that help you start or wind down the day.

By combining different types of smart tech to get the right light level, room temperature and atmosphere, you’ll benefit from a multi-sensory environment that supports your natural rhythm.

Why Use a Professional Integrator for Circadian Lighting?

While you can buy smart light bulbs and sunrise alarm clocks off the shelf, you should consider hiring a professional if you want an integrated system. A CEDIA-certified integrator will help you get the most out of your smart home technology and check that every element works together.

A Smart Home Professional will ensure:

1. Home-wide circadian lighting with centralised, seamless control
2. Integration across lighting, audio, blinds and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC)
3. Custom schedules and automation that match your lifestyle
4. Systems that automatically adapt as seasons change

By investing in a professional installation, you’ll have the reassurance that your circadian rhythm light technology will work exactly as you want.

Circadian Wellness and the Future of Smart Homes

As more people begin to understand the impact of light and other factors on their body clock, circadian wellness will become a more common design principle in smart homes. After all, who doesn’t want a better sleep cycle?

Further smart tech developments will likely include:

1. Wearable connectivity: You’ll have the option to connect your wearable devices to your smart home.
2. AI-driven adjustments: Based on data from your wearable, an AI could analyse your body’s rhythm and your in-the-moment needs (i.e. more sleep due to a late night) and tweak your surroundings to suit you.
3. Customised profiles for each household member: One person’s circadian rhythm isn’t necessarily the same as another’s. Household members will also have unique needs due to work patterns or lifestyles. While you can already make room-by-room adjustments to suit individuals, future smart tech could identify individuals with biometrics (i.e. facial recognition, iris scans) and customise lighting to suit their rhythms wherever they are.

The rise of circadian lighting is part of a wider trend of smart homes that actively support your health, so we’ll likely see increased integration with more wellbeing-focused technologies.

Invest in Your Wellbeing with Circadian Lighting

Circadian lighting is a science-backed way to sleep better – and feel better. By building a smart home that supports your circadian rhythm, you’ll create a space that works with your body’s natural rhythm.

If you’re interested in making circadian wellness part of your smart home installation, find a CEDIA-certified smart home integrator near you.