What bothers me the most is that you tend to go from nearly pitch black to lifting the shades and now it's brighter than a billion suns because your eyes have no chance to react. Even leaving the room into a hallway that has minimal natural light from other windows is an issue.

The natural progression of the sunrise is very helpful to have your eyes auto-adjust by the time you open them since it goes through your eyelids with your eyes closed.

I'm not sure how to solve this problem in a way that's reasonable. Building a robot to unhook the trash bag based on the sunrise time is out of scope of what I want to do. Maybe some type of solar powered automatic curtain rod exists, I haven't looked but it's worth exploring. I wonder how others solve this. I feel like the solutions I'm thinking of are way harder to implement than it needs to be for such a common problem.

There have to be uncountable numbers of lamps, timers, and home automation solutions that can gradually bring the lights up at sunrise or whenever you'd like to arise. Or if you insist upon the shades being raised as your solution, about five hundred US dollars will get you an automated shade that can be configured. Ikea has some coming out (oh, real soon now, they've said for the past year) that are less expensive, but I don't know how well they block light.

Artificial light doesn't feel the same. I imagine those configurable shades work based on time like an alarm; that's a good idea.

The shades I'm thinking of (both Ikea, and others) work with Apple's HomeKit (et. al.), so you can automate it however you like. Sunrise, five minutes before you wake up, fast open, slow open...

If you got something like the newer white grow light LEDs it might. I might suggest something like samsung LM301B LEDs for their excellent efficiency.

Do you know of any that can read the time of a phone alarm automatically and start opening slowly x minutes beforehand?

> However, I don't get that slow increase of light in the morning that wakes me up gently.

There's a specific type of alarm clock that does that. Philips Wake-up Light (e.g. https://www.usa.philips.com/c-p/HF3520_60/-) is the best known brand but there are others.

This. I'm considering building some system to open the blinds around my wakeup time, since the neighbor's floodlights are so bright.

I have the same issue. My complex installed very bright lights outside my window so I put up blackout curtains. It's great for sleeping but in the morning I have no clue what time of day it is, and I miss that "gentle wakeup" from the morning light.