Five tips for a better night’s sleep in 2022

It’s been well documented that sleep is an integral cog in our wellbeing, contributing to our physical and mental health. However, despite its importance, a staggering percentage of people regularly deprive themselves of sleep and complain of tiredness or a groggy feeling during the day.

Though there are a range of issues that can cause sleeping troubles, health experts recommend putting together a concrete plan that can help you gain more sleep each night.

For many people, trying to implement drastic lifestyle changes can be overwhelming, however, taking it step by step is the best way to achieve a better night’s sleep. Here, we’ve created a four-step plan to improve your sleep hygiene.

• Creating a relaxing bedroom environment
• Regulate your sleep schedule
• Perfect your pre-bedtime routine
• Adopt pro-sleep habits during the day

In each section, you can find specific actions that can help you to fall asleep and wake up well-rested.

Creating a relaxing bedroom environment

Making your bedroom as serene and relaxing as possible is an essential step in improving your sleeping habits. Though this might seem like an obvious step to take, it’s often overlooked, contributing to difficulties getting to sleep and sleeping through the night.

In this current environment, many of us are working from home and often use our bedrooms as offices. This can make it difficult to discern between work time and relaxing time, contributing to a poror night’s sleep. Thus, a relaxing bedroom design is more important than ever.

In designing your sleep environment, focus on maximising comfort and reducing distractions:

Use a high-quality mattress and pillow:

A high-performance mattress is crucial to ensuring that you are comfortable enough to relax. Many people avoid investing heavily in a mattress, however, when you factor in its lifestyle contributions and the length that they can last for, it’s a worthwhile purchase. It also ensures, along with your pillow, that your spine gets ample support to avoid aches and pains.

Remove any excess light:

Light disruption can meddle with your sleep and circadian rhythm. Some great curtains over your windows or a sleep mask over your eyes can block light and prevent it from disrupting your sleep.

Keep noise to a minimum:

Reducing noise pollution is an important part of building a sleep-positive bedroom. If it is difficult for you to reduce noises or they are out of your control, consider drowning them out with a fan or white noise machine. Earplugs or headphones are another option to stop disruptive sounds from bothering you when you want to sleep.

Regulate your sleep schedule

Creating an effective and regular daily sleep schedule is an important step towards getting better sleep. It’s important to pick a target time to go to sleep and then set an alarm to wake up at a specific time. Once you stick to this routine for a few weeks, your body will adjust to the times and naturally send signals to your body that it’s time to sleep.

When first starting out your schedule, try to be more flexible. Often, if you set a bedtime of 10pm instead of your usual 1am, you won’t be tired and will spend hours in bed trying to get to sleep. So, to start off with, sleep when you are tired but ensure that you wake up early. This way you’ll gradually become more tired earlier on in the evening and be able to find that sleeping sweet spot.

Perfect your pre-bedtime routine

If you have a trouble getting to sleep, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the problem starts when you lie down in bed. In reality, your behaviour in the hours before bedtime plays a crucial role in preparing you to fall asleep quickly and effortlessly.

Poor pre-bed habits are a major contributor to insomnia and other sleeping issues. Changing these habits may take some time an effort, but the rewards will be more valuable than anything

As much as possible, try to create a consistent routine that you follow each night because this helps reinforce healthy habits and signals to mind and body that bedtime is approaching. As part of that routine, incorporate these actions:

• Reduce your screen time before bed (phones, laptops etc)
• Dim the lights an hour before your bedtime
• Try to relax and wind down before you get into bed

By incorporating these actions into your pre-bedtime routine, you should see far better results and improve your sleeping habits.

So, now that you have a few tips on how to get the perfect night’s sleep, it’s time to grab a few accessories that can help you on your way. Browse our fantastic range of sleeping productsand take the next step to that relaxing night’s sleep.