We need to talk about bedside water carafes
A bedside water carafe might be the best option for your night water drinking—but honestly, probably not
Like any good brand manager, I have a Google alert set up for the phrase “night water” to catch any and all mentions of this fine late night newsletter in the media. It has yet to actually catch a single mention, but that’s why they call it fishing. Most of the articles that come through are about midnight floods or water main breaks. Once, I got a press release for a Canadian artist’s new solo exhibition. All of them night water, but none of them Night Water.
Until Google delivered “An Honest Look At The Best Bedside Water Carafes” to my inbox. Published at Tell Me Best by deputy editor Kristi Eckert, this review of three bedside water carafes is pure Night Water, so much so that I was kicking myself for not thinking of the idea. The closest I got to this content was a Night Water Cooler from April asking “Beside table or fresh from the fridge?” Not one person mentioned a carafe!
So, tonight on Night Water, let’s take an honest look at “An Honest Look At The Best Beside Water Carafes” and decide whether or not their picks are worth the hype.
First of all, why would I need a bedside water carafe?
Easy—you wake up in the middle of the night and you’re thirsty, and when you take a sip, something about that night water just hits different.
But Eckert presents us with a problem: if we’re thirsty, we’re going to have to get up out of our comfortable bed in order to get a fresh glass of night water. By the time you’ve laid your head back down, mouth sufficiently moist, you’ve “completely derailed your slumber.”
The solution, according to Eckert? A bedside water carafe.
What exactly is a bedside water carafe?
A carafe is an open-topped glass flask used to serve cold liquids. Often, it comes with some kind of matching glass that can be placed over the open top. While carafes can be used to serve wine, do NOT confuse it with a decanter, which is specifically used to aerate and oxygenize wine.
Using some Sherlock-level deduction, we can confidently state that a bedside water carafe is an open-topped glass flask specifically used on a bedside table to serve water.
Or, as Eckert puts it, “a bedside water carafe is exactly what the name suggests.”
What are some pros and cons of a bedside water carafe?
According to Eckert, there are three pros and four cons to bedside water carafes.
The pros? You can move them around the house (sure, but then it’s not really a bedside water carafe anymore, is it?), they have great aesthetics (to each their own), and they’re inexpensive (all thanks to the development of mass-produced glass in the late 1800s).
The cons? Too many options (that’s why we’re producing this bedside water carafe content!), it’s a hassle to pour water in the dark (why fridges have lights), you can’t take it on the go (… sure), and cats love to spill them (which was my first thought as a cat owner).
I’ll add a few additional cons:
- They take up a lot of space on your bedside table, which for me is already much coveted real estate.
- Most carafes will not do a better job of keeping water cool than any other open-topped glass container, such as a mason jar.
- Now you gotta be responsible for this carafe.
Is a bedside water carafe right for me?
According to Ekert, “a bedside water carafe is a perfect solution if you are someone who frequently wakes up during the night in need of a drink of water.” But given the cons we’ve already discussed, a bedside water carafe is hardly a “perfect solution” to the problem of nighttime hydration.
Assuming that getting water from the fridge or straight from the bathroom tap is not a solution for you, you’ll likely want to consider some of the following options instead of bedside water carafes:
- A water bottle, such as a Yeti or Swell, that closes and can keep water cool all night long.
- A regular old glass that can be refilled and repurposed in the morning without taking up too much space on your bedside table.
- A mini-fridge, as suggested by Night Water reader Kimi.
Let’s say I decide to ignore your advice and get a bedside water carafe. What’s the best one out there?
Ekert and the Tell Me Best crew suggest three different carafes at three different price points, though as they themselves point out, one con of the bedside water carafe is that there’re just too many dang options.
If the bedside water carafes from Tell Me Best’s list don’t fit your style, you might like one of the 15 standard suggestions from Martha Stewart, 18 beautiful suggestions from Vogue, or 25 stylish suggestions from Hunker.
Adam, was engaging with this search engine optimized content monetized by affiliate links just an excuse to see if Night Water could rank on Google for the keyword “bedside water carafe”?
Yes! Find out if it worked next time on… Night Water!
