I’ve used a lot of smart home devices in my time, and I thought I’d seen them all. However, there’s one device I bought recently that’s been a real game-changer. It’s not something I ever thought I needed, but it’s had a big impact on my family and me.
What is a motion-activated toilet night light?
Turn your toilet turquoise
A motion-activated toilet night light is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a night light that’s activated by motion, and you fit it inside your toilet. It hangs over the rim 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 lux sensor, so it’ll only turn on if the bathroom is dark enough. If you walk into the bathroom in daylight, the light won’t turn on. But during the night, it will light up to help you see where the toilet bowl is, without having to turn on the main light.
These devices are very cheap, and they’re small enough that they can fit inside the bowl without being too obtrusive. I was worried it might quickly get messy and gross, but it’s easy enough to install so 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 toilet night light was that I was having issues when going to the bathroom during the night. Before getting the toilet light, I’d have to go into the bathroom, turn on the main light, and then turn it off again once finished.
The bathroom has an old fluorescent light fixture, and I couldn’t easily get a dimmable smart bulb to put in its place. The other issue is that even with a smart bulb, it would light up the entire bathroom. The light would have to be fairly bright in order to see the toilet, which is the entire problem.
A toilet night light only lights up the interior of the bowl. The rest of the room remains in relative darkness.
The nighttime problem this weird gadget solves
A light that doesn’t wake you up
Until I got the night light, turning on the main light in the bathroom at full brightness was causing real problems. My eyes would quickly adjust to the brightness of the harsh fluorescent light, making it hard to go back to sleep. I would often lie awake for a long time and struggle to get back to sleep after visiting the bathroom.
The same problem was affecting my kids, too. 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 again, now that they were wide awake.
A motion-activated toilet night light solved this problem. The bathroom remains reasonably dark, and only the bowl lights up. It’s enough to see what you’re doing without making a mess, but it isn’t enough to fully wake you up. I find it much easier to get back to sleep when using this device.
The gadget isn’t truly smart
Adding it to Home Assistant isn’t worth the effort
It’s debatable whether this really counts as a smart gadget. The motion night light can’t be connected to Home Assistant, for example, and controlled remotely or used as part of an automation. All of the logic happens internally: the motion sensor triggers the LED unless the light level in the bathroom is bright enough that it doesn’t need to turn on. I have no control over any of this.
It might be possible to add a gadget like this to Home Assistant by connecting it to something like an ESP32 board, but then I’d need to add some kind of housing, and it all seems far too much effort just to be able to control the device remotely.
The device does have some smarts. It turns on at night when someone enters the bathroom, turns off again after a while if no more motion is detected, and it all happens without any manual interaction. To be honest, there’s really no reason why I need to make it any smarter than it already is.
Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it
A motion-activated toilet night light seems like a bit of a novelty. Why would you need your toilet bowl to glow in different colors? Having used it in my home, it’s something I now can’t imagine living without.
Sleep is really important, and this device makes it much easier for me to get back to sleep after going to the bathroom. It was a cheap device, but to me, it’s priceless.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
