So what's the deal about red night lights? I'm going to tell you three key reasons why you should choose red in colour for your child's night light. Number one is it protects night vision. So it's like you see your infrared things and night vision goggles, it's always red isn't it that you see. The dimness of the light and the redness of the light doesn't affect our night vision so you know if you go into the bathroom in the night, turn on the light, you would be like oh gosh it would seem really bright, your eyes would adjust and then when you go back into the darkness, turn the lights out, go back into darkness, you'll let you can't see a thing. Until your eyes adjust to the darkness again and then you can see a bit better again. You don't get that with red light, red light doesn't affect that night vision and you know that need to adjust and readjust all the time. Number two and this eye feel is really the biggest thing, the key thing, the most important of these reasons is the red, the dim red light doesn't suppress our ability to make melatonin which is a sleepy hormone. Other lights do, they suppress the sleepy hormone production. So daylight is caught is actually a form of blue light, it's the kind of light we get from screens as well, it's not actually blue in colour, but it's the form of blue light. Other lights, white lights, a lot of LED lights and bright lights, they are going to cause that melatonin suppression. It's done for a reason, it's how it made biologically for a reason. We used to back in the days when we lived in caves, we used to set our body clocks based on day and night, light, you know, light and darkness and so we learn and we develop circadian rhythms by the light. Light means we're going to get up and do stuff, darkness means we're going to sleep and so cleverly we are made to endotneous, producing the sleepy hormones so we can go to sleep and we can get some rest and the light is there to help us with energy and give us a adrenaline and actually release the hormones and chemicals to keep us going and keep us awake and active. We're made that way and that's insanely clever, but sometimes we have to, especially in now when we don't live in caves and in this modern day and age we have so much more technology, so many more screens and devices and things in our faces a lot of the time and children as well and babies are exposed to so much more of these lights and this light stuff going on and what that will do and I don't want to go too science and you'll know what you know basically this goes in through our eyes and it travels in various places and it affects the brain and it stops that production of sleepy hormones. In fact it does the opposite and it will cause the release of weakly up hormones and so yeah it's going to really impact your child or baby or your own ability to settle to sleep. So sometimes we do have to trick ourselves and we need to put ourselves into darkness and this is why I advise making things really dark for nap time as well because we can't expect a baby to easily settle to sleep in bright light and when you're teaching them to sleep in the day when you're doing some nap training especially you need to black out the daylight you need to make it nice and dark and conducive to sleep so you're going to put them you know give them the best chance of actually getting off to sleep. So that second reason is my favourite number one most important reason why a red night light, a dim red night light is the preferable option because it won't do that stuff it will allow this hormone to be produced and you'll stay in that nice dark comfort place where you can sleep. You might be thinking well why have a light at all? You don't need to have a light at all. If your child is happily sleeping in total darkness that's fine there's no reason why you need to have a light but this is all here for you if you feel that some light is needed or your child if it is a little bit fearful of the dark which leads me on to my third and final point today which is giving a little comfort that's another reason to have a red night light to give a little comfort. Lots of little ones particularly early age of six to eight but sometimes earlier than that as well express these fears of the dark they're you know they're absorbing so much more in that age in that stage of childhood and they're hearing stories from their friends and seeing things on television that Queen you know creates some things in their imagination and it can create these sort of nighttime fears and not being able to see anything can add to that fear it's that fear of the unknown whereas having a dim light in the room having some light in the room being able to just see around give some that sense of comfort that they know what's what they can see what's there and that sound they just heard isn't something right there because they can't see you know so it's it's comfort but if that light can be a dim red one they still can see around they can still have that level of comfort but without affecting the sleepy hormones so I really hope that helps you gives you three really good reasons to have a red night light and I hope a deeper understanding on why red why a dim red light why not a bright yellow one the next best option to red is a dim amber and that's that's pretty good too if you need an alternative red's definitely the best and you want to just avoid the the brightness and it comes from other colors so try and get to as close to that nice deep red or deep crimson that you can really really low amber I hope that helps and any other parent you think this will help please do share it pay it forward subscribe to our YouTube channel if you press the little bell you will get notifications when we release new episodes of the Sleepnanny show and do have a look around there'll be a link here somewhere that will take you to a really cool free printable that will help you further with getting your little one sleeping soundly take care