The founder
I wasn't waking up. I was being woken.
Hannah, 27, founder of Dealvo. Here is why this lamp exists in this shop, and why it is this one and not another.
Half past six, in January
It is dark outside, and it will stay dark for another two hours. The alarm goes off. It is not a wake-up, it is an extraction: my heart racing before I have worked out where I am, my hand groping for the phone, nine more minutes. Then nine more.
I started my days late and already in debt. For a long time I thought that was simply what mornings cost.
What I tried first, and why none of it worked
- Going to bed earlier. It improves the night. It changes nothing about the second the alarm goes off.
- A gentler ringtone. Within a week my brain had filed it under noises to ignore.
- Sleep tracking apps. I learned a great deal about my cycles. I still got up just as badly.
- A bedside lamp on a timer. It snapped on at full strength, straight in my face. Worse than the alarm.
Every time, I was treating sleep. Sleep was not the problem. The crossing was.
The body does not wake to noise
This is not a revelation, it is something obvious that we forgot. For almost all of its history, the human body has been woken by light, and gradually. Light prepares the waking before the eyes even open. Sound lands in a body that is still asleep and puts it on alert.
So I was not looking for a nicer sound. I was looking to change the signal.
What I ruled out, and why
There are dozens of sunrise alarms. I did not want most of them.
The 180 € models
They do the job. They also charge you for a brand name and a touchscreen nobody needs at six in the morning.
The 40 € lamps
They do not build up light, they switch on. That is exactly what I was running from.
Anything that needs an app
An alarm that depends on your phone keeps the phone in the bedroom. That is precisely what you are trying to get out of it.
Bright blue displays
A vivid blue thirty centimetres from your pillow cancels part of what you just gained.
What was left had to do four things, and nothing else: build up light gradually over a stretch of time I choose, keep a sound alarm as a backup only, offer something to fall asleep to at night, and be set up by hand, in two minutes, with nothing to install. That is Aurora.
Thirty nights, because a week is not enough
I am not asking you to take my word for it. You do not know me, and I have an obvious stake in this.
The body takes one to two weeks to settle into a new waking habit. Below that, you cannot judge honestly. That is why the guarantee is thirty nights and not seven: it is the time it takes to know. If after thirty mornings you get up exactly as you did before, you send it back.
See AuroraHannah · founder of Dealvo
