Sleep is an essential part of our lives, helping to keep both body and mind energised throughout the day.
Unsurprisingly, your bedroom can play a major role in the quality of sleep you get, with certain features helping to promote a good night’s rest while others can distract and deter away from this.
There are certain changes you can make to your bedroom that can help to promote sleep and relaxation. Below is a list with just some of these changes to consider:
Reduce Light Exposure (Including Blue Light)
Light holds a major influence over your circadian rhythm – a component to our biological clocks helping us to regulate sleep. When winding down for sleep, it’s best to try and lower the levels of light that surround you, helping to encourage a healthy circadian rhythm.
Therefore, one way to optimise your bedroom, particularly when winding down for bed, is to reduce the amount of light within it. There are a number of ways to do this, one incredibly effective way being to purchase blackout curtains. Blackout curtains can help to significantly reduce the amount of light coming into your room from outside, thereby helping to optimise your bedroom for sleep.
Other ways to optimise your bedroom for sleep via lighting is to choose lamps that aren’t too bright, helping to further encourage relaxation and a sense of calm before dozing off.
It can also help to reduce your exposure to blue light while getting ready for sleep, as it’s claimed that blue light can cause disruptions to your circadian rhythm. When using electronic devices, such as a TV, tablet or smartphone, you’ll be exposing your eyes to blue light. Therefore, when trying to settle down for sleep, it can help to limit your usage of such electronic devices, helping to further promote sleep.
Remove Distracting Gadgets
Following on from the previous point, it can also help to remove or turn off all distracting gadgets from your bedroom when trying to go to sleep.
Hearing irregular, erratic noises when you’re trying to get to sleep – e.g. loud notifications popping up from a tablet or other smart tech devices – can be a huge distraction, preventing you from drifting off smoothly. Therefore, by taking any such devices out of the room, or turning them on silent before you go to bed, can help to reduce annoyances distracting you from a calm and easy drift off to sleep.
Lower Noise Levels
Sound can be another major distraction that can disrupt your sleep. External noises can make it difficult to drift off to sleep, and can also wake you up from sleep, disrupting the quality of rest you get throughout the night.
It’s best to minimise any noises you can control – e.g. those within the house – when settling down for the night. For any that are beyond your control, it might be good to consider purchasing ear plugs, or a white noise machine to help drown out these disruptive sounds.
Manage the Temperature
It’s also important to ensure the temperature of your room is optimised for sleep. A good temperature for your bedroom to be ranges from 15.6 to 22°C. Rooms that are too hot can cause disruptions to you sleep, and making sure that your bedroom is a comfortable temperature for you to drift off in can help to prevent such disruptions.
You can help to adjust the temperature of your room through a variety of different ways, including such simple tools as using a fan or opening your bedroom window.
Choose Your Bedding Wisely
Your bedding can also play a major role in the quality of sleep you get. Firstly, it’s important to make sure your bedding is comfortable and clean, as this can help to promote relaxation when in bed.
It’s also good to check you’re using the right products for your bed, Making sure the mattress, the pillows and the sheets are comfortable, supportive and promoting of a good night’s rest.
You can find comfortable, great quality bedding through providers such as Cosy House Collection. Cosy House Collection sell a range of different products, many of which can help to promote sleep quality, including their breathable, thermal-regulating bamboo bed sheets.
Bedding is one of the more direct components that make up your sleeping environment. Making sure your bedding is comfortable can therefore be a tremendous help in getting you relaxed and ready to recharge for the next day.
