The Best Night-Lights for Babies, Kids, and Teens
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Whether you're up at night feeding a baby, convincing your toddler no monsters are lurking in the closet, or making sure your child can go to the bathroom without waking you—a night-light is essential. Some of the best night-lights include soothing extras like sleep sounds or help with bedtime training. Kids who tend to get up in the middle of the night need a portable light, and app control lets you turn night-lights down or off remotely without waking your wee ones. These are our favorites.
Check out our other bedtime buying guides, such as the Best Sleep Gadgets, Best Sound Machines, and Best Mattresses.
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Best Overall
A night-light, sound machine, and dimmable clock rolled into one, the second-gen Hatch Rest is a handy gadget with something for kids of all ages. Parents can use the app to set colors, play soothing sounds, and schedule sleep and wake routines, with one color for sleep and another when it’s time to get up.
You should also consider the second-gen Hatch Rest+ ($90), which has a wireless charging base with a built-in battery to make it more portable. It also offers an expanded library of content and a bedtime wind-down routine. You get one free month of the Hatch Sleep Membership with all models ($50 per year). It's optional, but it provides a steady stream of soundscapes, lullabies, and sleep stories.
Runner-Up
This portable light has a wireless charging base and a whole bunch of relaxing modes that combine lighting effects with sounds. It also works as a Bluetooth speaker for streaming music or stories. Govee is one of our favorite smart lighting brands, with a wide range of products and a versatile app that lets you schedule lights, choose from millions of colors, and pick premade scenes with animated lighting effects.
However, there is such a thing as too much choice. It's all crammed into the app, but once you figure it out, the versatility is impressive. Luckily, this Night Light also has physical controls for cycling through scenes, though it’s easy to press the wrong button in the dark. Battery life is limited—Govee estimates between three and 30 hours, which is a ridiculously wide range—but it depends on what scenes and sounds you choose. (I found the lower end of that estimate more realistic.)
Best for Older Kids
My family loves the Wiz Portable Lamp because it’s packed with smart lighting tricks in traditional handheld lantern form. The touch controls are on top to turn it on, change brightness, and cycle through your favorite modes (which are set in the app). The Wiz app is easy to use and offers remote control for brightness, color, scheduling, and animated lighting effects. Capable of a lovely warm glow, it works well as a night-light, and the handle makes it very easy to carry if your kid (or you!) need to get up at night. Fully charged via the USB-C port, it’s good for around six hours. If you've never heard of the brand, Wiz's parent company, Signify, also owns Philips Hue.
Best for Learning
Before kids learn to tell the time, it can be challenging when they wake in the night to know whether they should get up or turn over and go back to sleep. The Groclock offers a simple solution: The face is blue through the night, and when it’s time to rise, it turns orange. There's an owl on the latest version, shown sleeping at night and awake during the day. (Never mind that a nocturnal owl is a strange choice.) The stars come out at night and disappear one by one as morning approaches.
The Groclock also has an alarm function and charges via USB-A. (You get the cable but no power adapter.) You can set separate times for weekdays and weekends, and you can tweak the brightness, which is always handy for a night-light. We used the original version of this with both of our children, and it proved fairly effective. (There will always be the odd night they insist on waking you!)
Best for Teens
A lava lamp for the digital age, the Moonside Lamp One has 120 individually addressable dynamic color zones inside to produce all sorts of mesmerizing lighting effects. The app allows you to set colors, brightness, and warmth, and you can choose lighting themes with names like Night Fire, Rainbow One, and Blue Lava. App control via Bluetooth is a little clunky, and the lamp is slow to respond sometimes, so I recommend connecting it via Wi-Fi, which also lets you enable voice controls using a Google Assistant or Alexa speaker.
The power button is on the bottom, and there are no other physical controls, which makes for a stylish look where the light is the star. This means it won’t be suitable for kids without a phone unless you set up voice controls for them. It’s also very lightweight and easy to knock over, so pick an out-of-the-way spot.
Most Elegant
One of our favorite sunrise alarms, the Casper Glow Light can also be a great night-light for kids or adults. It sits on a wireless charging base, can be flipped to turn on or off, is easy to carry around, and is durable enough to survive a tumble. Wiggle it to get a gentle light if you need to get up in the dark and don’t want to wake anyone else. It radiates a lovely warm light, and you can twist it to adjust the brightness. Set a schedule in the app and it will gently wake you. The Casper Glow can even help you drift off, as it gradually dims as bedtime approaches.
