Setting up your nursery the smart tech way
For any new parent, getting the nursery ready for the arrival of your newborn baby is an exciting time. These days, it’s not just cuddly toys and cots you should put on your shopping list though. There are some great smart home products that are practical and simple to use, making those first few months easier and giving you peace of mind. Take a look at our smart home checklist for first time parents.
Smart lights
The right nursery lighting can help soothe your baby to sleep and lots of parents find soft, nurturing colours a huge help for night feeds. By replacing your existing bulbs with smart lights you can quickly dim and change the tone of the lights through the app on your phone. It means you can get the lighting exactly how you need it, in an instant.
One of the things we love about smart products, Hive lights being a great example, is that they can be used for lots of different things. With 16 million colours to choose from, it can be used as a night light, a normal light, to help them unwind and even for fun games as they grow. It may not be a cute onesie or soft toy, but we’d say they make awesome baby gifts for first time parents.
Smart thermostat
If you google ‘smart thermostat’ you’ll find lots of advice on how they make heating your home easier for everyone. But smart central heating can be particularly helpful for new parents.
It’s really important to keep your baby’s nursery at a consistent temperature in order to keep them safe and healthy (The Lullaby Trust recommend 16 – 20°C). For some parents this can be a constant source of worry. Traditional room thermometers are great, but you have to keep sneaking into the room to check it and risk waking your baby up. Instead a smart thermostat gives you peace of mind at a glance, straight from your phone.
Having instant access to your heating isn’t just useful when it’s on, it’s handy when it’s off too. For instance, you can start warming up the nursery when you’re on the way home from the park. And if you use Hive Multizone you can just turn the heating on in the parts of your home where it’s needed, like the nursery and bathroom.
Smart Plugs
Wouldn’t it be even better if you could control all the electronic gadgets in your baby’s bedroom from your phone? Not just the smart ones. Then, when your little one finally falls asleep in your arms, you wouldn’t need to worry about waking them while you get the room exactly how you both want it. Baby gym off. Heating up.
That’s where smart plugs come in. Attach them to your existing socket, plug the device into it and you can instantly control them from your phone.
Smart speakers
Like so much of the other smart tech we’ve talked about, smart speakers are another example of something that you’ll find has multiple uses in your little one’s nursery.
Google Home or Amazon Echo are great for hands free control of things like lights and heating. Useful when you’re changing a nappy at 2am and realise you’re going to need more light to get the job done. Or adjusting the temperature of the room while you’re feeding.
Smart speakers are also a convenient way to settle your baby. Using only your voice you can ask Alexa to play anything from a heart beat to techno trance (a tried and tested approach from one sleep deprived member of the Hive team).
Check out more smart advice for first time parents on the rest of the blog. Or for more information on Hive’s smart home tech, visit the Hive shop.
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