I’d love to be able to press a widget and set off a nap mode. Fade down the lights over a fixed amount of time (preferably fading down through warmer shades - I don’t mind if it ends up on 1% orange as a nightlight, that’s an easy way to get a warm fade), wait a fixed amount of time, and then fade them back up again to wake me up. I can do the fade either way, IFTTT is good for that, but not the fixed time in the middle, and I don’t nap at the same time every day. Napping too long gets you into deep sleep and can disturb your night’s sleep, so controlling it with light would help. And I don’t know why some naps leave you so groggy you’re worse than before you fell asleep, but I have a suspicion this would help with that as well.
So my ideal might be:
15 min - fade down from 100% 3500K white to 1% orange
1 hour - stay on 1% orange
15 min - fade back up to 100% 3500K
You could also fade to completely off, but the colours wouldn’t be as pretty, and I like having a “nightlight” when napping to help distinguish it from sleeping all night in proper darkness.
Right now I press an IFTTT widget to fade down to 1% orange, either fall asleep or rest a bit, and when I wake up, press another IFTTT widget to fade back up to white. It definitely helps me doze off and then become more alert afterwards, but it doesn’t wake me up at the end of my desired naptime, and I loathe alarm clocks. I’d far rather wake up with light, and this is a simple sequence to run, I’d hope.
It could also be really useful for people with unstable sleep patterns, such as rotating shift workers, who just want to fall asleep now and wake up x hours later.