Hi everyone, a number of years ago, I posted my original Bedtime Bulb on this forum. Bedtime Bulb v1 was a warm white, low blue, low flicker light bulb that went on to become relatively successful—we had around 40,000 customers. Lots of great feedback from this forum.
We had the product on the market for about 6 years and learned a lot along the way. It took forever to perfect the v2 version, but it's finally in production and shipping next Month (October 2025). This design is a hybrid LED-incandescent that is essentially the best of both worlds: long lifetime, low wattage, low blue, low flicker, and smoothly dimmable.
Here's what we learned from v1 and improved in v2:
- Better flicker reduction: Depending on power conditions, our old bulb could have had very low flicker, but we found a typical measurement in the field was between 4% and 7% at 120 Hz. Worse, for a small percentage of users, some unstable power situations (such as a refrigerator cycling on and off in an old building) would cause the bulb to think it was dimming, changing the intensity every ~20s to a few minutes. We took a completely different approach to dimming and flicker on the new bulb, and it's now stable at <2% at max output, no matter the conditions. We had a test from LightLab International that clocked in at 0.9%. Flicker does increase as you dim it, but only up to the level of incandescent.
- Introduction of infrared: We believe there is merit to the research of infrared supporting cell repair/local melatonin production. These are still early days, but we wanted to start re-introducing near- and short-wave infrared into our product, up to the thermal limits for a bulb form factor. We measured the output to extend out to 1700 nm.
- Dim-to-Warm: We designed the product to be used in the hour before bedtime. During that hour, what light is comfortable and appropriate for health shifts. When paired with a dimmer, Bedtime Bulb v2 is 2100 K at max output but dims down to 1700K. It's pure incandescent at the lowest setting.
- Much wider dimmer compatibility: LED bulbs struggle with dimmers, and finding a dimmer + bulb combination that works involves trial-and-error. We introduced a feature we're calling Perfect Dimming. It dims smoothly with any standard dimmer, even the very cheap tabletop TRIAC dimmers.
Optimize Your Biology just published a detailed review of the product, diving into additional flicker and photometric measurements.
Bedtime Bulb v2 in production now and will ship in early October to the US and Canada. We're wrapping up engineering on a European version—different efficiency standards meant we had to take a different approach—coming early next year.
Please let me know if this post falls outside of the "minimally commercial" guidelines; we're just genuinely trying to offer a better solution to the problem of unhealthy light (and continually outdo ourselves). I would love to hear your feedback on how this might help with eye strain and related issues, and any suggestions you have so we can continue to get better.
