When my daughter was a baby, I always had trouble with the light when I would get her in the middle of the night. Turning the overhead light on was far too bright. All the outlets were behind furniture, so a nightlight was out. There wasn't an outlet by the door, so I'd end up fumbling across the room in the dark to turn on the lamp, and even it seemed to bright in the dead of the night.
Our solution was to install a dimmer switch. This allowed me to turn on just the right amount of light to get her out of bed, without blinding us both.
We now have dimmers in all the kids rooms. My youngest uses the overhead on the lowest dimmer setting as a night light, since there isn't a good outlet in his room, and when we did have a nightlight, it always seemed to get left on all day. My husband and I also installed a dimmer in our room. It's great for when my husband wakes up at 5 am. He can turn on just enough light to find his way around without waking me up.
By Stephanie from Hillsboro, OR
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Great idea. I was just thinking we need it in our den so we can lower the lights for the TV at night, but then turn it up during the day for the kids playing games.
When we had our boys 41 yrs. ago, when nighttime feeding happened, we never turned any bright lights on. In our bedroom, we had a night light and in their nursery, we had a night light. I just cringe when I see new parents, on the TV shows, turning bright lights on when feeding babies. When feeding, we never took them out of their rooms to feed during the night. After feeding, we just laid them down in their cribs. They eventually learn to sooth themselves back to sleep unless they were sick.
I installed dimmers in the bathrooms for middle-of-the-night trips. It's not nearly as blinding and I go back to sleep faster.
We did that 20 years ago for our kids. We also have one in our main rooms. Since we have ceiling fans in all the rooms, the switches have one for dimming the lights & one for changing the speed of the fans.
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