Our daughter developed a fear of the dark when she was 2 years old. I bought a number of nightlights; the basic plug-in variety, which gave little light. The rectangular plug-in that gave an eerie green glow which was supposed to simulate the moon - but was actually quite scary. After months of hysterical nights I bought the Autofade as I was at my wits end. Its a very simple curved lamp in a frosted white plastic ,sitting 18cm tall by 15cm wide and 8cm in depth. The light is baby/toddler proof and doesn't get hot. Its simple to use. There are two buttons, the bottom turns the light on and if you keep your finger on this button it will get dimmer/brighter until you get to the brightness that suits you (this setting is then stored for future use). The light is a nice, warm glow - fully on is good for reading bedtime stories, we then turn it down to settle her to sleep and further still when we go to bed. The Autofade has been a huge success and is still being used three years later. Today we bought a second Autofade for our 20 month son, who is starting to get upset when he goes to bed. For him, we use the botttom button to turn on and then touch the top button. The light starts off bright and then slowly dims over 15 minutes and turns off. It worked like a dream tonight, giving him the initial security of the light and then easing him gently into sleep mode.

At £21 the light is a fairly expensive option, however it has greater flexibility than most other lights. It's not particularly pretty, and quite bulky when travelling. It does appear to be toddler proof, ours has been thrown around in baggage and pulled off the shelf with no ill effect (there is a 2 year guarantee). There are two things I would change to make it even better; the first is to have the choice of either battery/mains operation to cut down the bulkiness when taking it away with you. Secondly, the screw that you have to undo to replace the bulb is deepset at the end of a long chamber - requiring a screwdriver that isn't in any of my toolkits. I did manage to get the bulb in tonight with alot of twisting and brute force and thankfully without breaking it. If the dark is a real issue with your child then this is a good investment - its certainly made our evenings alot more peaceful.