When it comes to high-tech bedroom essentials, there’s no better place to start the discussion than with the bed. Sleep quality is ever-important to humans, whether we are growing teens, hard-working adults, exhausted parents, or elderly folks with chronic pain. Even without any overarching gripes to contend with, getting primo sleep is just a huge ingredient for good health. When we sleep our best, we’re less likely to overeat, lose control of our emotions, feel stressed, or feel chronic physical pains.
Smart beds and other adjustable beds now offer a range of high-tech options, from isolated temperature control to USB charging ports. These industry-leaders offer extreme customization to support bedtime needs and provide us with our best night’s sleep every night. Beyond remote controls, some of these high-tech beds now include built-in sleep tracking, which can help us optimize our sleep, even as it may change seasonally or over time. Sensors and accommodations which the mattress comes equipped with will be able to both analyze data about our sleep time and help improve it.
Maximize Your Sleep Time
If the idea of sleep tracking sounds appealing to you but you’re already happy with your mattress, consider a separate sleep tracker. Many smartwatches offer this functionality, but there are plenty of separate techs available on the market, as well, which is specific to helping monitor sleep quality and quantity.
Most of these units are watch-like, wearable products, while some are akin to portable, environmental scanners. The information provided by either type will vary; for example, the wearable tracker will use actigraphy to access information about you as you sleep (think heart rate or body positioning) that a remote device will not. Alternately, a remote device may be able to acquire information about the environmental factors affecting your sleep more so than a wearable device will.
Summon Serenity
Other high-tech bedroom essentials that may help improve sleep quality include cooling pads, heating pads, aromatherapy pillows, temperature-regulated pillows, anti-snoring pillows, body positioning pillows for back pain, and calming, weighted blankets. As we attempt to wind down for bed, our sensory input seems to heighten, and we become very particular about our surroundings. Almost everyone has their version of “one leg outside the covers, fan on, extra blanket across the top half,” to the tune of whatever equals maximum comfort on a very personal level. These high-tech bedroom accessories allow us to summon our most magical, comfortable sleep conditions with minimal effort on our part.
The Magic Juice
Once sleep is squared away, it’s time to maximize convenience and—let’s face it—just feel cool and futuristic. What else is high-tech really for? There’s no better way to achieve these goals in a hurry than to invest in a voice-activated hub, be it Google Home, Alexa, Apple HomeKit, or a voice sleep system. These bad boys do just about everything.
On their own, these hubs offer music, entertainment, emergency services, weather forecasts, news broadcasts, access to podcasts and audiobooks, alarm clocks, shopping lists, audio notes, audio messages to friends who have a compatible unit, and loads more features, all of which are incredibly helpful and life-enriching. Fully using one of these devices to its potential truly is like having the world at your fingertips and an assistant with a literal perfect memory.
Beyond these features, these hubs offer options like sleep sounds, which replace the need for a separate sound machine for those of us who need white noise as part of our ultimate sleep equation. For me, this has been a lifesaver for drowning out neighborhood dogs barking incessantly overnight! For the specific voice sleep systems, the features from the prior paragraph may not be included, but rather replaced by technology that is catered to our sleeping habits and environment. These will work to help our sleep quality, as well as enhance our waking and falling asleep experiences.
The Next Level
With access to a smartphone or a smart hub and Wi-Fi, some next-level high-tech bedroom essentials become available to you. The first of these is a functional, practical, stylish, and potentially heavily cost-saving device: the smart thermostat. The brand Nest is a forerunner in this space, but other companies also now compete on pretty solid ground, as well. These companies produce thermostat systems with incredible capabilities, such as remote temperature control, highly programmable heating and cooling cycles, and use analytics. These easy functions offer maximum comfort and optimal use of your resources.
The second next-level high-tech bedroom essential at your disposal with access to Wi-Fi and a smartphone or smart hub is the smart bulb. Smart lighting includes unique bulbs which are programmable not only for what time they might be on or off, but these bulbs can also be set to a variety of colors and may be dimmed for aesthetic purposes, movie watching, mood lighting, holiday cheer, and so on. You can also control these remotely from your smartphone, which can be extremely comforting or helpful if you’ve forgotten to leave a light on for yourself at night.
Final Thoughts
Typically speaking, our health and our entertainment are both of high importance to us, and there are a few more high-tech bedroom essentials which cater to both of these interests.
Air purifiers have come an extremely long way from what they once were, with some models now even resembling art installations, blending in seamlessly with the room. Nearly all of them have become much quieter and less bulky than they once were, on top of the fact that their ability to remove allergens, odors, and harmful particles in the air has increased, as well. These gadgets are more than worthwhile, especially for those of us who get stuffy or seasonally irritated.
Finally, our entertainment can’t go unignored. For smartphone junkies, there is an array of hands-free holders which can support your nighttime habits with more comfort and better posture for your body’s health; for those who prefer a bit of a larger screen, consider an awesome high-tech projector. Many of these are now slimmer and require less space between the device and the space they are projecting on to, with some of them even looking really sleek and modern.
Tech on, and sleep tight!