The color temperature of ambient light has a huge impact on the body’s natural rhythms. Make the light too warm in the office and you’ll see employees yawning in the middle of the workday. Make it too cool in the bedroom and you may feel too restless to go to bed. A new light bulb called Silk is designed around providing the right light to support the body’s natural circadian rhythms, constantly adjusting its color to match the way the sun’s light changes throughout the course of the day.
Made by Saffron, the connected bulb doesn’t have the fancy mood-lighting tricks you can find in many popular bulbs in the category. Instead, its sole purpose is to provide lighting that makes you more productive, adjusting its warmth to energize you during the day and spur your body to produce melatonin to help you sleep at night.
Designed to screw onto any E27-type socket, you can replace existing bulbs with the Silk and start reaping its benefits right away. During use, the bulb with gradually change temperature from 2700K at night to a cooler glow throughout the day, peaking at 6500K at noontime, before slowly warming back down. Similar to Saffron’s previous product, Drift, it’s also designed to work completely with existing light switch fixtures. To make it behave like a regular bulb (non-changing color), flick the light switch once; to make the light cooler (daylight), flick it twice; and to make it warmer (nighttime), flick it thrice.
An accompanying app allows you to define your timezone, set automated on and off schedules, and make more detailed adjustments. You can also program custom settings for changing the light during the course of specific indoor activities, whether you’d like a little assist during yoga, a home gym workout, or a hot date in the middle of the afternoon (you know, make it feel like night or something).
The Silk bulb is currently raising funds via a Kickstarter campaign. Pledges to reserve a set of three starts at $99.