Ebb and glow: the tide lamp

While swimmers strap on watches and trackers, one Cornish inventor is building tech that does the opposite, a lamp that mirrors the real-time tide of your favourite coastline and asks you to simply notice rather than measure

Many people, not just swimmers, love to watch the rise and fall of the sea. Sitting at the coast and witnessing the wash of the waves, the falling tide or rush over sand is mesmerising. Maybe it’s because the movement of the ocean reminds us that we are a small part of something bigger or maybe because it’s a great reminder of nature’s power, but I like the consistency of the sea. No matter what is going on in the human world the tides ebb and flow, but if you live inland like me, the beauty of the sea is reserved for holidays and high days, that is until now.

Tidelight, founded by Alex Tweed, is a tide lamp that connects your chosen coastline using real-time tidal data to softly reflect the rise and fall of the sea through shifting colours. As the tide comes in, a blue ‘water’ colour rises in the lamp and as it goes out, golden ‘sand’ colour is revealed. It works with an app that is paired to the lamp offering thousands of coastal locations and you can schedule it so the lamp wakes and sleeps with the tide each day. In a world where technology is disconnecting us more and more from the natural world, the lamp keeps you tuned into the sea.

“The idea is to give people information away from a screen,” says Alex, whose work in IT means he is stuck on a screen most of the day. “We can have something beautiful in our home that isn’t bombarding you with data but connecting you on an emotional and even subconscious level with a circadian rhythm. Because it takes such a long time for the lamp to change, which is part of the appeal, it is unobtrusive but providing information in a gentle way.”

The idea behind the lamp started with a personal project back in 2017. Alex and his family had moved into a new home and he designed a bed out of reclaimed wood from Cornwall. He created a headboard with a lighting feature. “It was a present for my wife,” says Alex. “The first version was connected to the weather; it would flicker if there was rain. I am a bit of a nerd, so I was playing around with different things and programming LED lights, another idea was replicating fire. I then tried real-time data with tides, and it stuck, doing its thing behind our headboard for about five years. It was more like a projection on our wall, spanning the length of the headboard and friends were captivated by it, asking if they could have one. It was this that made me think of a lamp, which would be more accessible as a product.”

In 2024, with support from the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and Cornwall Council, Alex assembled a team of experts, including electronics and industrial designers, wood turners, and PCB (Printed Circuit Board) manufacturers in the South West of England to develop a marketable prototype.

“One of the biggest challenges was getting the lamp certified for safety,” says Alex. “It passed first time, which was great, but the stress of getting it to that point was extremely expensive and time-consuming. We are just a team of three and I have a full-time job and a family, with three children. We were bringing something completely new to the market so there was a lot of electrical safety certification to go through as well as technical challenges to overcome, it was a pretty trying time! We have a licence with the UK Hydrographic Office and Admiralty Maritime Data Solutions, we plug directly into their data which connects to the app, then the lamp. For a small business like ours, app development was another big challenge, there is so much we want to do but app development is traditionally very expensive.”

In April 2025, the first manufacturing run was funded in just four weeks thanks to overwhelming support of a crowd funding campaign, which raised 153% of the target. It enabled the team to begin crafting, wood turning and producing the parts required for the first production run of Tidelight. In July the app launched and then in November 2025 the first products were shipped to pre-order customers. “We are growing all the time, we have 500 customers now and it is great to see pictures of the lamp in people’s homes,” says Alex. “It makes all the hard work worth it. Most of our customers are inland and I think that is the appeal, for people to be connected to the sea in their home.”

Alex’s Tidelight at home is synched to his local beach in Portreath, Cornwall but you can sync with beaches across the UK and now also locations around the world. “My wife is a keen sea swimmer and I love supping,” says Alex. “The lamp keeps the whole family connected to the sea and you get used to where the tide is without really needing to look at it, it becomes part of your routine.” Alex has ambitions to develop the lamp with recycled plastics collected from the sea and always thinking of new products and in June, Tidelight was awarded a Muddy Stilettos Fashion and Interiors 2026 Award.

For more details visit tidelight.co.uk. Outdoor Swimmer readers can get £25 off using the code: WildSwim25