Sleep special
Create a sleep-
friendly bedroom
Y
ou can now get snooze-
inducing pyjamas, and
spend thousands on sleep
gadgets and smart mattresses.
But what really gives you a
good night’s sleep? We asked
the experts how to create the
perfect slumber conditions...MAKE IT SUPER-DARK
‘Your brain picks up even the
smallest amount of light, so your
room should be so dark that at
midday you should be able to
close the door and not see your
hand in front of your face,’ says
Chris. If you have street lights
shining into your bedroom,
invest in a sleep mask or some
block-out curtains to darken
your room.KEEP IT ON
THE COOL SIDE
‘For most people, the
temperature should be between
15-21C to keep you comfortable
throughout the night,’ Drew
says. Chris encourages people
to wear less, not more, to bed –
you can add extra blankets
if you get cold during
the night.
USE READING
LAMPS OR
A DIMMER
SWITCH
Low light at night-time
helps your body know
it’s time for sleep. ‘When
you’re reading or relaxing
in bed before sleep, youwant to be able to slowly
diminish the light in your
bedroom with some sort of
dimmer switch. And while LED
or halogen energy efficient light
bulbs are fantastic, a lot of times
those lights have unusual light
characteristics that may be very
heavy on certain colour
spectrums,’ says Chris.
Go for softer, warmer
light bulbs in your
bedroom.
BAN THE TV
‘Televisions produce
loads of light. This high
degree of light intensity,
in addition to the noise and
stress they produce, can
significantly worsen sleep.Your brain does not need to
listen to infomercials and
M*A*S*H episodes all night
long,’ says Chris. The same goes
for laptops and iPads in bed:
a study from Norway found that
teenagers who used a computer
in the hour before bedtime were
nearly three times more likely to
get less than five hours of sleep.
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