Sunrise alarm clocks compared: Lumie, Philips and cheaper options

What to look for in a sunrise alarm clock

A sunrise alarm clock is a bedside lamp that brightens slowly over a set time before your alarm, so the room is light when the alarm goes off. These are the specs that separate a £50 one from a under £150 one.

• Sunrise length, in minutes. The Lumie Glow 150 lets you pick 20, 30 or 45 minutes. The Philips HF3519 runs from 20 to 40 minutes, Philips says. The £49.98 Lumie Sunrise Alarm is fixed at 30. The Lumie Shine 300 goes from 15 to 90.
• Brightness, in lux. Philips quotes up to 300 lux with 20 settings on the HF3519. Lumie does not publish a lux figure for the Glow 150, but says the sunrise intensity is adjustable. More is not always better: you want bright enough to notice, not a floodlight.
• Light colour. Philips describes its sunrise as moving from soft red through orange to bright yellow. The Glow 150 has warm white, orange and red light built in.
• The display at night. This is the spec people forget. The Glow 150's display is light-sensitive and fades to low or switches off in the dark. The Philips display has four brightness levels and cannot be turned off completely. If a glowing clock bothers you, that decides it.
• Sounds and radio. The Glow 150 has ten sleep and wake sounds, including birds, waves and white noise. The Philips has five sounds and FM radio, and the Lumie Shine 300 has 15 sounds plus FM.
• Sunset. Both have a sunset setting that dims the light over a set time at night, for reading in bed without a switch to find.
• Warranty. Lumie gives three years on the Glow 150, the Sunrise Alarm and the Shine 300. Philips' UK page says two years on the HF3519.

Sunrise alarm clocks compared

Philips' own range table on Amazon UK shows the step-ups: the HF3531 at under £150 adds two more sounds and phone charging, and the HF3651 at under £200 goes to 25 brightness settings and 310 lux. Lumie's range runs from the £49.98 Sunrise Alarm through the £99 Spark 100 and Rise 100 to the £229 Luxe 750DAB with DAB radio.

Is a sunrise alarm clock worth it?

A sunrise alarm clock is worth it if your room is dark when you get up and a beep in the dark is how your day usually starts; it does much less in a room where daylight arrives before you do.

That makes it a winter buy for most UK bedrooms. In June, sunrise in London is before 5am, so unless you have blackout curtains, the real sun beats the lamp. In December it is closer to 8am, and the lamp is the only light you will see before you leave the house. If you have blackout blinds all year, it earns its keep year-round.

It also depends on how you use alarms. If you set five and snooze through four, a lamp that has been brightening for half an hour gives you a very different room to open your eyes to. If you sleep through light easily, keep a proper sound alarm on as well until you know.

On price, the gap between the Lumie Sunrise Alarm at £49.98 and the Glow 150 at about £119 buys you a choice of sunrise length, adjustable intensity and more sounds. The Philips costs a little more again and adds radio and fine brightness control. Unbranded sunrise clocks appear on Amazon UK for about £30 to £39; we have not picked any, because we could not check their specs against a maker's own page.

Can smart bulbs do the same job?

Smart bulbs can switch your lights on at a set time and brightness for very little money, but the cheap ones we checked do not promise a slow sunrise.

The Tapo L510B bulbs cost under £15 for two, fit standard B22 bayonet fittings, dim from 1 to 100% in the Tapo app, and run on schedules and timers with no hub. That means you can have the bedroom lamp come on at 20% at 6.45am and full at 7am. It is a step, not a fade, as far as the listing says.

The bulb route suits you if you want every lamp in the flat on the same schedule, or if you already have a bedside lamp you like. A dedicated sunrise clock suits you if you want the slow build, a sound and a snooze button in one box by the bed.

Things to know

• The light has to reach you. Put the lamp where it lights the pillow, not behind a pile of books.
• A shared bedroom means a shared sunrise. If your partner gets up later, the light will reach them too.
• The Philips display never goes fully dark. If you are sensitive to light at night, that matters more than any sunrise feature.
• Only the Lumie Sunrise Alarm lists battery backup, on 3 AAA batteries. We could not confirm backup on the Glow 150, the Shine 300 or the Philips.
• We have not tested these lamps ourselves. Specs and prices come from Lumie, Philips and Amazon UK on 11 September 2026. Sunrise times are general knowledge for London and vary across the UK.