The perfect bedroom for sleep

Keep your room dark for sleep

Light suppresses the sleep hormone melatonin, so essentially it keeps you awake. “Absolute darkness is critical for high-quality snoozing,” says motivation and well-being writer, Siimon Reynolds in Why People Fail.

“Your pineal gland is a vitally important brain regulator and very sensitive to light. Keep your room dark and your pineal gland tells your brain it’s night-time and it gets to work, helping your body regulate your hormones and clean up your mental filing systems.”

Tip: Invest in blinds or curtains that block out streetlight completely.

Dust away to doze off

The quality of oxygen you breathe during sleep has a big impact on how energetic you feel the next day. “The air you breathe when you sleep should be treated very seriously,” says Reynolds. “You spend around a third of your life in the bedroom—if you have low quality air in there you’ll have a lower-quality life.”

Tip: Consider buying a negative ion generator. This will emit ions that attach themselves to dust particles and help drag them from the air to your floor. Also dust and vacuum weekly, making sure to include your bed-head and mattress in the mix.

Technology-free zone

The electrical fields generated by electric clocks, heaters, televisions and sound systems can adversely affect your body’s electrical fields, says Reynolds, thereby making it less easy to relax and to fall asleep.

What’s more, having a television in your room can create psychological associations between your room and entertainment. What you want is for your room to conjure associations with sleep—yet another reason to keep the box away from your boudoir.

Tip: Swap electric blankets for natural ones and put your alarm clock in the next room. As Reynolds says: “Not only will that help you sleep, having to get out of bed to turn it off will stop you sleeping in.”

Stay cool

Make sure your room is not only quiet, but also cool. “It’s better to sleep in a cooler room than to be overheated and have a fitful sleep,” says accredited nutritionist Catherine Saxelby who runs the site foodwatch.com.

Tip: Rather than opting for a big thick doona, layer your bed with blankets or coverings of different weights. It’s easier to strip off blanket layers in the night (or add them) than it is to try and cool yourself by sticking bare limbs out from the sheets.