Optimizing the sleeping environment: How to relax better with the perfect bedroom

Sufficient and restful sleep is not only crucial for your performance and mood, but also for your health. Do you often have problems falling asleep or staying asleep? Do you often not feel properly recovered in the morning? Read here how you can relax again at night with an optimal sleeping environment.

sleep disorders can have many causes, such as stress, a disturbed day-night rhythm, shift work, active substances such as alcohol and caffeine or physical and mental illnesses. The fact that your sleep is not so restful can also be due to the fact that your sleep hygiene or sleeping environment are not quite optimal.

Have you ever thought that the television or smartphone could disturb your sleep or that the room could be too warm?

With the following tips you can perfectly coordinate your bedroom with the rest of the night and again at the end of the day sleep better.

What is the sleeping environment?

There are quite a few factors in your bedroom that affect the quality of your sleep. This also includes the sleeping environment. The sleeping environment is about the optimal spatial conditions. The following tips for a healthy and restful sleep include:

• Bedroom
• Driving & riding bits
• Light
• Temperature
• Air
• Sounds
• Electronics

How can I optimize my sleeping environment?

The tips for promoting your sleeping environment vary in terms of effort and feasibility. You have to find out for yourself which tips support your optimal sleep and to what extent they can be implemented for you. For example, you cannot use your room in a shared apartment exclusively as a bedroom.

DEEP SLEEP¹

Do you sometimes find it difficult to fall asleep after a stressful day, even though you have created good conditions for your sleeping environment? If your everyday life is too stressful for you again, try relaxation techniques and give them a try DEEP SLEEP¹ with melatonin. Melatonin is considered a sleep hormone and helps you fall asleep faster. Also contains DEEP SLEEP¹ in addition to melatonin, the active ingredient extracts Passionflower, Lemon balm and hop cones.

Optimizing sleeping environment: bedroom

It is ideal if you only use your bedroom as a bedroom and rest room. If you have to study or work, move your work to the library or other places where you can concentrate.

A desk that you look at from your bed, which is full of books and tasks, makes it difficult to think about relaxation. Associations such as bedroom - study - desk - work can consciously and subconsciously have a negative influence on you and lead to stress and sleep disorders. You should also keep your bedroom clean and tidy at all times, as clutter can spread to your mind as well.

If you often have the problem of getting out of bed in the morning, do not set your alarm clock directly next to the bed, but preferably on the windowsill. On the one hand this forces you to get up and on the other hand you can open the window directly and breathe in the fresh, cool morning air. That gives you an extra kick!

Optimizing the sleeping environment: bed

The bed is the heart of the bedroom and should be a place for you to relax and regenerate. For this reason, you should urgently avoid everything else here, such as eating, working, watching TV.

It is also important that you have the right bed for you. If your bed is not ergonomic, it can interfere with your sleep. The better you can sleep in your bed, the better you regenerate and recover. It is important that you have an optimal slatted frame and the best mattress for your body that adapts to your body.

If you have a partner, you should buy a bed system with two slatted frames and two mattresses that are adapted to your needs. Otherwise, one of the two of you could lose out and suffer from back pain. The classic sleeping positions are:

Optimizing the sleeping environment: light

Here and there an LED light from your electronic devices flashes, the apartment has no shutters, the street lights and the moon let light into your room or you are kissed awake by the sunlight in the morning, although it is probably not possible for you to get up yet. All of these things can disrupt and negatively affect your sleep. Surely you also have at least some of the examples that provide light in your bedroom. Nowadays it is actually not that easy to avoid light sources. But actually not that difficult. 

Try to remove any unnecessary light sources from your bedroom and make it as dark as possible. These aspects can help improve your sleeping environment:

• Curtains that darken the room
• Sleep mask
• Remove devices with illuminated LEDs
• special lamps that do not produce blue light, change the light spectrum according to the time of day or salt lamps
• Blue light filter glasses

Light lowers the level of the sleep hormone Melatonin and keeps you awake. Especially in the evening, blue light from artificial light sources such as electronic devices can be a trigger for sleep disorders. Many devices now have a function that filters the blue light.

Instead of using a conventional alarm clock, you could use a light alarm clock that simulates a sunrise in the morning and slowly and gradually increases light and noise. This will gently wake you up and make you less stressed.

When you wake up at your usual time in the morning, you should then immediately open your curtains or shutters to operate your inner switch. It has probably already happened to you that, especially in summer, when light seeps through the window, you wake up earlier. If you darken your room well, you can best control it.

Optimize sleeping environment: temperature and air

The higher your room temperature, the higher the temperature of your body. What does this have to do with your sleep? Sleeping in a room that is too warm or too cold makes it difficult to maintain optimal thermoregulation. You should therefore set your heating or air conditioning accordingly. The optimal room temperature for sleeping is around 18 ° C. However, it should always be cooler in the bedroom than in the other rooms of your apartment.

If you don't have a lot of background noise in front of your window, you can keep your window open at night and ventilate the room sufficiently. Make sure, however, that you avoid direct drafts near your head. Otherwise, just before you go to sleep, you should ventilate your bedroom again.

Research shows that poor room quality affects the respiratory system and can lead to sleep problems.¹ 

Here's what you can do to improve your room quality:

• ventilate the bedroom during the day
• Exclude mold growth through measurements
• Use indoor plants that increase humidity and convert carbon dioxide to oxygen as well as release negative ions into the air
• Use a dehumidifier and an air filter

Recommended plants for the bedroom are the golden stick palm, the snake plant and devil's ivy.² If you want to support your sleepiness a little, you can use special incense and relaxing essential oils, such as ylang-ylang, vanilla or lavender. The catch, however, is that using it can have a negative impact on your air quality.

 

Optimizing the sleeping environment: noises and electronics

Do you have your bedroom directly on the side of the main street, but your living room is on the inner courtyard? Then you should think about switching rooms if the street noise is affecting your sleep. If that is not possible, you can also use ear plugs. If you don't like the feeling of ear plugs, you can use certain sounds like white noise or binaural beats to help you fall asleep better. Also ban all devices from your sleeping environment that are buzzing, ticking or causing other annoying noises.

Electronic devices are not necessarily loud, but they can still have a negative impact on your sleep. It might be nice to lull yourself to sleep with the latest movie, and you might as well fall asleep easily in front of the television. However, it may lead to difficulty falling asleep, because you have the association TV - bed - entertainment. Your brain has difficulty coming to rest and is busy processing the rapid changes in image and sound. You surely know it if you have already dreamed of it in a few situations.