For a long time, I’ve suffered with sleep problems. I find it difficult to shut my brain off at night and get enough sleep to feel rested in the morning. I also struggle with waking up early, to the point that I have had to set alarms every 5 minutes for half an hour until the time I want to get up! This drives my partner mad, but it’s the only way I could guarantee waking up on time. Does this sound familiar to you? There are lots of us who have this problem.
How I Overcame Insomnia in 10 Steps
So for a long time, I have experimented with different ways to wake up, including altering the sound of my alarms (as after I while I seem to become deaf to certain alarm tones), altering the time in between alarms, sleeping with the curtains open so the sunlight wakes me up in the morning. Actually, the sunlight thing works, however there is a streetlamp right outside my bedroom window, so it keeps me awake all night if I leave the curtains open!
Lumie Bodyclock Starter 30
About a year or so ago, I was doing a little research on how to wake up feeling more refreshed, and I came across the Lumie Bodyclock Starter 30 sunrise alarm clock.
[UPDATE: Lumie have replaced the Bodyclock Starter 30 with their new product the Lumie Bodyclock Spark 100 alarm clock. It’s around the same price on Amazon, approx £60. I will be writing a review of this product in the near future.]
At around £60 on Amazon it seemed a bit more than I wanted to pay for an alarm clock, but I found the premise really intriguing. It’s basically a combination of a digital alarm clock and a bedside lamp, but the cool thing about it is that the lamp comes on gradually from half an hour before your alarm is set to go off. Say you set the alarm for 7.30, the lamp comes on very dimly at 7am and gradually gets brighter and brighter over half an hour until 7.30, when your alarm sound goes off and the room is filled with light.
After a few weeks of reading up about it, I finally decided to buy one. It was winter time, and I was really struggling with the dark mornings. And I figured, lots of people are giving it great reviews, maybe I should just try it out and see how I get on. So I ordered one from Amazon. And it was great.
My Lumie Alarm Clock Review
First of all, the morning after. I woke up before the alarm went off, wondering why the room was so bright! I’d forgotten about the Lumie Bodyclock until I opened my eyes and saw the bright lamp on my bedside table. It has a lovely warm yellowish glow, as it uses a halogen bulb rather than LED light. It feels like morning sunlight. You can almost feel it warm on your face. Also, it has a sunburst pattern on the back of the lamp so it shines rays onto the wall behind it which adds to that sunny sunrise effect.
The alarm sound itself was a bit 90s radio alarm… blaaap blaaap blaaap! There are other sounds you can use such as birdsong but I was worried these wouldn’t be enough to rouse me out of my slumber. I may experiment with these in the future. But I also found you could turn off the alarm sound and just use the sunrise lamp, so now I use it in combination with my normal phone alarm.
Bonus Feature
There was a great added bonus with the Lumie that I hadn’t even considered at first – it completely replaced my bedside lamp. Having my lamp on while I read in bed was previously too bright. I’d changed the bulbs several times to try and get it a little dimmer but it was still too bright. The Lumie lamp is completely dimmable from really bright to barely on! Perfect for reading in bed. You can set it as bright or dim as you want and change it up or down as needed. I haven’t looked back, and now read by dim light in the night time before going to sleep, and whack it up nice and bright in the mornings to wake me up. There’s also a setting so that it dims gradually in the evenings too, if you want it to tell you when to go to sleep! And if you fall asleep with the lamp on, it switches off automatically after 2 hours.
Controls
I did notice a few cons – the Lumie instructions are quite complicated to get the hang of. You do need to keep them by your bed for a week or two until you memorise the controls. I found myself fumbling with the buttons sometimes in the night if I needed to get up to go to the bathroom, but to be honest you get used to it pretty quickly. Setting the time and alarm is a bit fiddly too, but once it’s done it’s done. It would be nice to see some extra features like setting different alarms for different days, but there are more advanced versions on Amazon for a bit more money that have these features if you’re prepared to spend the extra.
Some of the reviews I read complained that the light bulb blew after only a few weeks. I did not have this problem at all, in fact even after a year my original bulb is still going. I did order a spare bulb when I bought the Lumie because I thought it would be worth having one on hand if it blew rather than having to wait a few days to order one. But so far, I haven’t had to replace it yet!
(Update: Actually my bulb did eventually die, we had a fuse blow because of one of our other appliances and somehow it also blew the Lumie bulb. Fortunately I’d already purchased a replacement bulb, but I’ve written a guide to replacement Lumie Bodyclock bulbs to help anyone who needs to buy a new bulb.)
All in all, I am absolutely thrilled with the Lumie Bodyclock Starter 30. After my first morning, my wake up time wasn’t immediately perfect every time, but it has definitely improved my mornings. It took a little bit of experimentation to find a set up that worked for me, including using my phone alarm in combination with the Lumie light, and finding the best time to set it. Having used it for over a year now, I am chuffed to bits with it, and have recommended it to friends who have similar problems.
Check out the Lumie Bodyclock Starter 30 on Amazon, I got mine from there and ordered a Lumie replacement bulb too. There are a few more varieties of sunrise alarm clocks now, compared with when I bought mine, it’s worth checking those out too and compare features.
Due to some enquiries about replacement bulbs, I’ve done a little research and posted a brief article on Lumie Bodyclock Replacement Bulbs. I’ve also uploaded the Lumie Bodyclock Instructions for those who have lost or thrown away the manual.
I really hope this review has been helpful to those of you with the same problems I’ve had, I would definitely say the Lumie helped more in the winter time with dark mornings than in the summer, but I had less of a problem waking in the summer anyway. Good luck to all, and let me know how you get on in the comments!