Recently bought some Hue smart lights to simulate sunrise with blackout curtains which is helping. Next up, motorized blinds that open at a scheduled time.
(#firstworldproblems)
They are permeated with little holes that allows light and sound in if they have not fully descended. If they have then the little holes are folded shut.
I’ve found the same issue where if they’re completely down waking up is hard, so I leave the top two rows of holes open to let in natural light.
I think having a small amount of light gradually filtering in helps a bunch to wake-up.
Video of shutters - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_KePLmie7lE
Small correction: not metal, these are (mostly) made out of plastic nowadays, sometimes aluminum, and earlier, from wood.
But yes, the effect if they aren't fully closed, is nicely adjustable to limit light without making a room pitch fark.
I automate what I can at home - the CHO (Chief Home Officer - my wife) mostly disapproves because of some weird concerns about reliability (70% of availability for lights is that I call great, but opinions vary).
There is a simple solution for the shutters - you can use a Shelly 2.5 (https://shelly.cloud/products/shelly-25-smart-home-automatio...) that you connect in parallel to the shutter. It works wonders if you have a manual switch on the wall and probably with a remote too (I specifically asked for a manual switch on the wall). You can program the device itself to open the shutters at, say, 10 minutes before sunrise or whatever. You can easily remove them when you leave your flat and reuse somewhere else.
The Real Solution For Real Hackers (c) is to use Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/). <flamewar on> Do not settle for inferior systems such as jeedom, domoticz, ... </flame war off please do not hunt me>
If you have electronic shutters, most of these are a simple 230V based system: one neutral line and two 230V inputs, one for each direction. Hacking them is easy, get two programmable 230V relays (e.g. use a Raspberry Pi relay board) and never ever activate both relays at the same time.
I was a bit annoyed at first and considered tweaking the mechanism to close the shutters fully, but in the meantime the impact this tiny changes has made on my and my girfriend's sleep patterns is tremendous and now I think I'll leave it that way.
We used to be very late sleepers, I work from home and regularly wouldn't wake up until 11AM or so. Now at 8:30 sharp I'm awake and ready to get up. It's a pleasant way of waking up too, I can tell that my body is sort of meant to be woken up that way instead of using an alarm sound. Obviously it also means that I get tired much earlier at night. But overall it seems like a positive change, especially since I'm in my mid-thirties and it's not like I regularly party all night anymore and I appreciate getting more time to do stuff in the morning.
This too is a bit generalised, as ours do fully close. In fact they actually snap into place to activate a break in barrier. This makes it harder to break in, as they can not be easily pushed up or removed.
Yes, I want! Have wanted for years, in fact. Hard to get here in the US, however.
I found that to help quite a bit and as a bonus they are portable and much more economical than motorized blinds or blackout curtains.
That being said motorized shades do seem pretty neat and may have a privacy advantage depending on where you live.