Suggestions for a children's reading light with a timer?

September 6, 2013 5:23 AM

Suggestions for a children's reading light with a timer?

My 3 year old really likes to "read" books at bedtime for a little while. The lights in his room are not situated such that he could turn them off on his own, and I don't want him getting out of bed to mess around with a light anyway. I am looking for some kind of reading light (or regular light) that has a built-in timer feature. Googling and searching Amazon aren't producing great results for me. I don't really want to buy a separate timer to put on a regular lamp. I want something that makes sense for a kid's room, so nothing that is easily breakable. I've found book lights with timers, but the books he's looking at aren't good for those kinds of lights, and I don't want to give him something fiddly like that in bed anyway, I want to be able to turn a light on and have it go off 15 minutes later on its own. All the timer lights I'm seeing for kids are nightlights or for homework, neither of which would work for this situation. Any suggestions from people with kids-reading-in-bed experience?

posted by banjo_and_the_pork to Home & Garden (6 answers total)

I own two Mighty Bright book lights - they're well made and hard to break, and I'm guessing the new Mighty Bright with Timer will be reasonably bombproof as well.
posted by enfa at 7:02 AM on September 6, 2013

How about a wall switch timer? Pre-set units like the Leviton 6215M are as tough as a regular switch, easy to use and straight forward to install however you need a neutral in the switch box which you may not have. A 6515M works without a neutral in the box but only for incandescent lighting (IE: regular tungsten or halogen bulbs not florescent or LED).
posted by Mitheral at 8:13 AM on September 6, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks so far! I hope this isn't thread-sitting, just adding a few details: Kid's room doesn't have wall switches (house was built in the 1800s), it's an overhead light with a pull cord and a tree-style floor lamp. The Mighty Bright came up in my search, but I'd rather not give him something to fiddle with, he'll keep himself awake playing with the light, and it won't work well with the flimsy little softcover kids books he reads in bed (think 20 page Curious George book with floppy covers). The posts on his bed are too thick to attempt to hook the book light onto the bed itself.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 8:30 AM on September 6, 2013

Best answer: Possibly too nightlighty, but we've been using the Babytec Autofade. It's pretty tamperproof and has a mode where it starts off bright and gradually fades over 15 minutes, though for the last couple of minutes it would probably be too dark to read by.
posted by gnimmel at 8:54 AM on September 6, 2013

Best answer: If you have a smartphone, a WeMo outlet would be both schedulable and controllable on the fly. I haven't seen the app so I don't know if it has a straight timer.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:01 AM on September 6, 2013

Response by poster: That Babytec Autofade is exactly what I was looking for! Sadly, it's not for sale in the US. I think the WeMo outlet might turn out to be the best shot at solving this problem.

Thanks!
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 11:24 AM on September 6, 2013