I’ve used a lot of smart home devices in my time and I’ve seen them all. However, there is one device I recently purchased that has been a real game changer. It wasn’t something I ever thought I needed, but it really affected my family and me.
What is a motion activated toilet night light?
Turn your toilet into turquoise
A motion activated toilet night light it is just as it sounds. It’s a motion-activated night light that you place inside your toilet. It hangs from the side of the bowl and shines a small LED into the bowl itself, lighting it up in different colors.
The night light turns on when motion is detected and it includes a luxury sensorso it will only turn on when the bathroom is dark enough. If you enter the bathroom in daylight, the light will not turn on. But at night, it will help you see where the toilet is without turning on the main light.
These devices are very inexpensive and they are small enough to fit inside the bowl without being too obtrusive. I was worried it might get messy and gross quickly, but it’s easy enough to install that it’s mostly out of harm’s way.
Why I bought a toilet night light
You don’t want to stick a smart bulb in your toilet
The reason I bought a night lamp for the toilet was because I had trouble going to the toilet at night. Before buying the toilet light, I have to go into the bathroom, turn on the main light, and then turn it off again when I’m done.
The bathroom has an old fluorescent light fixture that I couldn’t easily get a smart bulb that can be turned off to put in place. Another issue is that even with a smart bulb, it will light up the entire bathroom. The light should be bright enough to see the whole problem toilet.
The night light of the toilet only illuminates the inside of the bowl. The rest of the room remains in relative darkness.
This strange gadget solves the problem at night
A light that doesn’t wake you up
Leaving the main light in the bathroom at full brightness until you got the night light was causing real problems. My eyes quickly adjusted to the brightness of the harsh fluorescent light it’s hard to go back to sleep. I often slept awake for long periods of time and struggled to get back to sleep after visiting the bathroom.
The same problem affected my children. They would go into the bathroom, turn on the light, wake themselves up and usually come and wake me up because they wanted help getting back into bed, they were wide awake now.
A motion-activated toilet night light solved this problem. The bathroom remains quite dark and only the bowl is lit. It’s enough to see what you’re doing without causing confusion, but not enough to fully wake you up. I find it easier to go back to sleep when using this device.
The gadget is not really smart
Adding it to Home Assistant is not worth the effort
It is debatable whether this is really considered a smart gadget. A moving night light, for example, cannot be connected to Home Assistant and controlled remotely or used as part of automation. All the logic happens internally: if the light level in the bathroom is not bright enough, the motion sensor activates the LED and there is no need to turn it on. I have no control over any of this.
It may be possible to add a similar gadget House helper combining into something like ESP32 boardbut then I have to add some sort of housing and all of that can be a lot of effort to control the device remotely.
The device has some smarts. It lights up when someone enters the bathroom at night, turns off again after a while when no more motion is detected, and all without any manual interaction. Honestly, there’s no reason to make it any smarter than it already is.
Don’t knock it until you try it
A motion-activated toilet night light seems like a bit of a novelty. Why do you need your toilet bowl to shine in different colors? It’s something I can’t imagine living without now that I use it in my home.
Sleep is really importantand this device makes it much easier for me to fall asleep after going to the toilet. It was a cheap device, but priceless to me.
