You’ve tried everything from subbing in medication to eliminating caffeine for your habitual pre-bed phone scroll, yet you are still barely getting good sleep you need to function optimally on all cylinders when the new day begins. You need quality sleep to endure the high levels of stress of the normal workday. Therefore, not getting sufficient sleep drastically affects your mood, energy levels, and overall performance significantly. Focusing your attention to your ideal sleep environment could reveal some important insights into the way you sleep and making minor adjustments can produce big, impressive results in enhancing your experience.
The right décor and furnishings can easily transform your bedroom into a relaxing and deeply therapeutic retreat while enabling you to enjoy a good night’s rest. Whether it’s soothing color schemes, luxurious bedding, or unique and eye-catching accent pieces, focusing on your design decision results in a stylish space for better relaxation. Below we share some important upgrades you might want to consider. These upgrades will certainly help you wind down when your day ends and ensure you enjoy the best quality sleep ever. What’s more, you will always look forward to spending your time in this space every day.
1. Color Coordination
The color theme of your bedroom environment plays a major role in how you sleep. According to numerous studies conducted over the years, people with a blue color scheme in their sleeping environments ranked highest for the best sleep every night. Those who incorporate brown, gray or purple color schemes in their bedrooms seemed to rank lowest in terms of sleep quantity and quality.
Consider choosing calming colors as these have a powerful effect on your energy and mood. Incorporating the right hues transforms your bedroom into the most relaxing retreat. Watery blues, soft greens, and earthy browns are the most comforting color shades. Even so, the one-size-fits-all approach does not apply here. Whatever makes you feel relaxed and happy will help you unwind and calm down at the end of the day.
2. Ban Electronics Devices from Your Bedroom
Electronic devices are sleep stealers, which makes you wonder why some people keep complaining over their lack of sleep when they get into the habit of watching TV late at night or resort to using their mobile phones in bed. The blue light emitted by laptops, TVs, and mobile phones could potentially disrupt your circadian rhythm. It is recommended that you stop using these devices at least one hour before you go to bed. Remember, your bedroom is no place for you to catch up with some of your favorite TV shows or chat on social media with friends. Instead of doing this, you should be focusing on getting quality sleep and extracurricular activities if you’re a married couple. Therefore, banish all electronic devices, including laptops, phones, TV, and other gadgets that can prevent you from getting good sleep.
3. Restful Lighting Is Important
With their endless alerts and blue glaring light, electronics over-stimulate the restless mind. Even the ordinary lights in your bedroom can keep you awake at night. Many light bulbs, especially LED bulbs emit blue light that signals your brain to cease producing melatonin – a powerful hormone that is helpful for catching sleep. If you wish to make your bedroom environment a more restful place, consider replacing the bulb in your bedside lamp with one having a depleted blue spectrum.
By swapping out standard bulbs for the more ambient and dimmable lighting, you get to have more control over the kind of lighting you install in your bedroom in terms of temperature and brightness.
4. A Bedroom Fireplace
What could possibly be more relaxing than loosening up at night in front of your roaring fireplace? Consider having a chimney-free electric fireplace in your bedroom and enjoy the coziness on a new level. While no venting is required for such fireplaces, this underscores the significance of buying a unit that is correctly sized to match the heating requirements of your room. Get it installed and serviced properly to make sure the air quality isn’t degraded to the point that you are not able to sleep at all.
5. Cozy Up With Temperature Regulating Bedding
Both your body and ambient temperature are important components you must never ignore if you want to fall asleep. Make sure your room is neither too cold nor too hot. According to experts, 65 degrees should suffice. Additionally, you should wear your pajamas to bed and sleep in a bed that ideally keeps you warm and cozy rather than make you sweat or overheat.
6. Allergen-free Bedding
Consider reading the labels carefully before you purchase allergen-free bedding. It is important to note that Hypoallergenic bedding will mostly have fabric made from materials you are not allergic to. Dust-mite covers, on the other hand, actually trap mites in them, while ensuring they don’t come out of the mattress.
7. Invest In a High-Quality Mattress
Your mattress play an important role in determining whether you get quality sleep or not. The majority of high-end mattresses have a lifespan of 8-10 years, but some last beyond this period, depending on the level of care you implement. Therefore, if you have had yours for longer or you suddenly realize that it isn’t comfortable enough, then an upgrade is a good idea. You need to make sure that the next one you get supports you and feels cozy and soft enough for you as well. According to the Bear hybrid review on Memory Foam Talk, Bear Hybrid mattresses provide superb support in all sleeping positions while the soft exterior cover ensures that users get a comfortable sleeping surface. Note that the type of mattress you buy affects your sleep in many ways than you can imagine. Studies show that a new mattress can improve sleep quality by 60%. While there are so many brands to choose from, you need to be sure you are getting a quality mattress for a good night’s rest.
8. Upgrade Your Pillows
Worn-out pillows are enough to give you nightmares. Here is a simple trick you should try to help you determine whether it’s time to replace your pillows: Fold your pillows in half. If they do not spring back, then it’s certainly time to get rid of them and get new ones. Consider your sleeping style when looking for the ideal pillows. If you are a back sleeper, choose thin pillows as these cradles the neck. If you are a stomach sleeper, then you ought to get the thinnest pillows you can find or sleep without any. If you mostly sleep on your sides, you should choose soft pillows that include a gusset in the design.
9. Blackout Curtains Are Ideal
Your bedroom should ideally be dark when you snooze, but the light getting into your bedroom from outside affects your sleep. Therefore, you need to take measures to keep light out while you sleep. One of the easiest ways of ensuring your bedroom stays dark is to install blackout curtains. You can choose from a variety of different colors and sizes, meaning you can easily find some that match virtually any room or décor style. Make sure the curtains are good enough to blackout your room completely.
10. Introduce a Desk
Bringing a desk in your bedroom does not mean you create a workspace where you can complete the work you carry back home from the office. Instead, you should use this desk as an additional surface that you can use for many productive activities and keeping items. Use the desk to update your diary or journal, writing something or use it as a surface for keeping your wallets and purses (if you do not want them occupying your bedside table).
11. Banish All Disruptive Noises
Noise is yet another sleep distraction and it can get even worse if you reside in a neighborhood with noisy neighbors or annoying street traffic. While it may seem inevitable, try to keep noise out of your bedroom. Your brain still processes sound while you sleep and getting some quiet time is critical for getting enough rest.
One solution involves investing in a white noise machine. The devices produce a neutral background noise to help mute disruptive loud sounds. White noise comes in handy when you’re finding it difficult to eliminate other forms of disruptive noises, as it enables you to cover these noises using sound that allows you to sleep soundly at night.
12. Make Your Bedroom Clutter-Free
Winding down after a long day will be particularly hard when your bedroom environment is filled up with furniture, exercise equipment, paperwork, to-be-folded laundry, and numerous other items. Note that as long as your bedroom is cluttered, it won’t be the ideal environment for you to enjoy your sleep. Both figuratively and literally, cleaning your room, decluttering, and purifying the atmosphere helps filter the air and gets rid of bad smells. Always strive to keep your room neat and tidy while making sure everything is stored away in their rightful places. By doing so, you create space and plenty of breathing space that is both relaxing and therapeutic. As a result, you’ll fall asleep quicker and easier.
13. Create A Natural Environment With Plants and Flowers
Having plants and fresh-cut flowers in your bedroom environment brings a lot of benefits. Besides being beautiful, they add a sense of calm and interest to your sleeping environment without being too overwhelming with their colors. Buying flowers is a good way to motivate yourself into keeping your house more organized and cleaner at all times. This is great, especially if you consider that clutter and quality sleep don’t go together.
Add some plants in your bedroom or buy yourself freshly cut flowers. With these, you can enhance the look of your room’s interior and they help you get better sleep as well.
14. Reconsider Your Bedside Alarm
Sometimes it can be annoying and frustrating to be jolted suddenly from deep sleep by the disgusting sound of the alarm clock. Thankfully, you have many less annoying alternatives to your alarm clock that you may consider as a replacement. For instance, you could have woken up lights, which gradually increase in intensity and brightness over a set interval. You may also use the fitness wearable trackers that wake you up in a more gentle way.
15. Make Your Bed
Failing to make your bed daily actually impacts your quality of sleep. If you refer to the idea of keeping the room tidy and clutter-free, you do realize that making your bed allows you to enjoy better sleep. There is no magical fix to this if you are one of those people with a chronic habit of avoiding to make your bed. However, one simple strategy you might want to apply is to have bedding with interesting designs you can enjoy and show off. A well-made bed gives you some satisfaction. What’s more, you can go straight to your bed and catch up with your sleep with no major change needed.
16. Install a Ceiling Fan
A ceiling fan can lull you to sleep by creating a nice gentle breeze to cool down your body while whispering white noise as well. Since these are cheaper to operate than the typical air conditioning system, you will not spend many hours lying awake fretting over electric bills. If you suffer allergies induced by dust, then you should buy a model with blades having nanoparticles coating to prevent the buildup of dust.
To begin your journey to better sleep, it is imperative that you take some time to fully optimize your sleep environment. While it is easy to find a single reason why you do not sleep quite as well as you used to, optimizing your individual sleeping habits to realize the best possible sleep means you must get the right balance between environment, behavior, and circadian rhythm. By implementing the upgrades and tips discussed above, you can enjoy the best sleep of your life. While you can’t add more hours into your normal working day, you can certainly tinker with your sleeping environment to improve your chances of catching a restful night’s sleep.