SMART HOME BUTLER · BATHROOM
The mirror light should change with the hour
Cool white in the morning so you wake up and can see properly; warm amber at 3am so it does not sting and does not chase your sleep away. One fixture, six different versions of itself.
Most bathrooms have exactly one kind of light
Brushing your teeth, putting on make-up or shaving in the morning, you need to see clearly, and cool white keeps skin tones honest. Get up at three in the morning and that same light hits your face like a bucket of cold water — twenty or thirty minutes gone before you get back to sleep.
Those two needs are opposites, but most homes only have one switch and have to pick one. Usually it gets specified for the morning, and then wakes you up properly every single night.
There is no need to choose. If the light knows what time it is, it can decide for itself what to look like.
Why the colour matters at night
Your body reads light to decide whether it is day or night. High colour temperatures and blue light suppress melatonin, the hormone that makes you sleepy. A cool white mirror light at 3am is effectively telling your body that morning has arrived.
Warm amber interferes far less. Set that night period to around 2200K, dim enough to see where you are walking, and most people get back to sleep without much trouble.
One day at the mirror, in six moments
The chart above is the whole day seen from above. In practice what you meet is the six moments below, and the clock times are defaults rather than rules.
- 00:00 – 05:00
The 3am trip you barely wake up for
You push the door open with your eyes half shut, and you neither squint nor reach for a dimmer. At 2200K and 15% the light picks out the basin and little else, and your face in the mirror stays vague — which at that hour is not something you needed anyway.
- 05:00 – 08:00
The light brightens while you brush
It starts at 4000K and 60%, still faintly amber. By the time you look up from brushing, the same fixture has walked itself to 5000K and 100%. You touched nothing; the period ramps on its own and your eyes come round with it.
- 08:00 – 17:00
Home in the day, washing your hands
Flat 5000K at full output, no movement at all. Touch up lipstick at lunch, glance in the mirror after washing your hands, and the colours match what the street will show you ten minutes later.
- 17:00 – 20:00
Through the door, straight to the basin
Down to 4000K and 80%. The step is small enough that you rarely register it, yet your eyes have started coming down from a full day at full intensity. It is the one setting here you are meant not to notice.
- 20:00 – 22:00
The shower and cleanser hour
3000K at 60%, and the warmth is now obvious. Once steam fills the room that warmth reads as comfortable rather than dim, and there is still enough light to take make-up off without leaving patches.
- 22:00 – 00:00
Last visit before bed
The final switch-on of the day returns to 2200K, this time at 25% — a little above the small hours, because you still have a face to wash. The reflection stays soft on purpose: what you need now is not detail, it is not being woken up by your own bathroom.
Why each period is set that way
The same day laid out from another angle: where each of those numbers comes from.
| Period | Colour | Brightness | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| 00:00–05:00 night | 2200K | 15% | Enough to see your feet. No glare, no lost sleep, back to bed without trouble |
| 05:00–08:00 morning | 4000K → 5000K | 60% → 100% | Warm to cool, helping you wake. Ramping is gentler than jumping straight to full |
| 08:00–17:00 day | 5000K | 100% | Brightest and whitest, for accurate skin tones when shaving or applying make-up |
| 17:00–20:00 evening | 4000K | 80% | Starting to cool down — the transition from activity to rest |
| 20:00–22:00 night | 3000K | 60% | Clearly warm. Plenty for showering or removing make-up without waking you up |
| 22:00–00:00 pre-sleep | 2200K | 25% | The last stretch. After brushing your teeth you are heading to bed, so the light should stop interfering |
Four things it takes care of
Sleep
A 3am trip no longer wakes you properly. On its own this is usually worth more than the other three put together.
Seeing accurately
Make-up, shaving and checking how you look all need enough light at the right colour. Warm amber will lead you astray.
No glare
Walking from a dark room into a bathroom at full brightness hurts. With periods, the light matches the state your eyes are already in.
Nothing to manage
No extra switch to learn, no scene to pick. You press the same switch you always did — it simply comes on right every time.
Different people, different settings
| Your situation | What to adjust | How |
|---|---|---|
| You wear make-up | The daytime block | Full brightness, colour up to 5400K — close to daylight, so foundation shades match |
| Shift work | All six periods | Shift them to your actual routine, not the clock. Your day may be somebody else's night |
| Older adults at home | The night block | Raise 15% to 25%. Safety outranks sleep quality — seeing the floor prevents falls |
| Light sleeper | The night block | Drop to 2000K and 10% to keep the disruption as small as possible |
| Bathroom has a window | The daytime block | 70% is plenty — daylight is already doing half the work |
What you need to have
| What it does | Category in the system | Essential? |
|---|---|---|
| Colour-adjustable mirror light | light | Yes |
| Detect someone entering | binary_sensor | Nice to have |
| Manual override | switch on the wall | Nice to have |
How the whole thing works
Use the ready-made blueprint
The hub ships with 22 tested automation blueprints — think of one as a fill-in-the-blanks form. This uses adalight, which exists precisely for "six periods a day, each with different light". All you supply is the six sets of numbers.
| Field | What it means | Suggested |
|---|---|---|
| Which light | The mirror light | — |
| Period boundaries | Your routine, not the clock | See the table above |
| Brightness per period | Six percentages | 15 / 60-100 / 100 / 80 / 60 / 25 |
| Colour per period | Six Kelvin values | 2200 / 4000-5000 / 5000 / 4000 / 3000 / 2200 |
| When it applies | Whenever the light is switched on | On switch-on |
One optional addition
| If you want | Blueprint | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Lights off when you leave | binary_sensor_trigger_light | Turns the light on when someone is detected and off a few minutes after they leave. The two pair up: this one handles on and off, adalight decides what "on" looks like |
You do not have to set it up — just say the word
Those six sets of numbers are not something you have to type in by hand. The WOOWTECH hub ships with HA-MCP, so an AI assistant can reach into your system directly, do the work, and then check for itself that the light really comes on the way that period says it should.
Prompts you can copy straight across
Every block below can be copied whole, and the button on the right does it for you. Pick the one closest to what you want; you do not need all five.
Make the bathroom mirror light follow the time of day, in brightness and in colour. Very dim and warm overnight, brightest and coolest during the day, warming down gradually through the evening. If the light cannot change colour temperature, just do the brightness half of it and tell me that is what happened.
Set the bathroom mirror light to six periods across the day. Use the ready-made blueprint, do not write a pile of custom rules. First check whether the light supports colour temperature and what its Kelvin range is; if it does not, tell me before you build anything. The six periods: 00:00 to 05:00 at 2200K and 15%; 05:00 to 08:00 rising from 4000K at 60% to 5000K at 100%; 08:00 to 17:00 held at 5000K and 100%; 17:00 to 20:00 down to 4000K at 80%; 20:00 to 22:00 at 3000K and 60%; 22:00 to 24:00 back to 2200K at 25%. If it cannot reach 2200K, use its lowest supported value and tell me what that is. Apply the settings at the moment the light is switched on, never halfway through a shower. If there is an occupancy sensor in the bathroom, add lights-off a few minutes after I leave. Once it is built, test it yourself, confirm it really works, and then tell me which devices you used.
I work nights: I sleep in the day and I am up all night, so do not set the periods by the clock. Put the brightest, coolest block in the three hours after I get up, and the dimmest, warmest block in the daytime hours before I sleep. I wake around 3pm and go to bed around 7am, so shift all six to match. List the actual start and end times of each period when you are done.
The overnight block at 15% is too dark, raise it to 25% and leave the colour at 2200K. Start the pre-sleep block at 23:00 instead of 22:00, I am going to bed later. The daytime block can drop to 80%, the bathroom has a window and it is too bright. Leave everything else alone.
The mirror light does not look like what I asked for, but I cannot say what is off. Do not change anything yet. Lay the six periods out in a table for me: the brightness and colour temperature each one is really using now, next to the numbers I originally gave you, and mark every cell that differs. I will read it and then decide.
Common questions
My light only dims, it cannot change colour
Does it flash bright before dimming?
Does it change colour mid-shower at a boundary?
Will my manual adjustment get reverted?
My routine is irregular — how do I set the periods?
Do I have to rebuild it to change the numbers?
A month from now
You get up in the night and fall back asleep quickly. Those "well, I am awake now" nights have become much rarer.
And in the morning you look more like yourself in the mirror, because the light is finally the right colour.