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Feeling hot and bothered by your summer sleeping pattern? Try following some of our top tips.
1. Sort your bedding
Start by swapping your heavy tog duvets with something lighter. We recommend our Embrace Silk Filled Duvet, which is luxuriously lightweight and temperature regulating. Cotton sheets work well on those particularly hot nights where even the coolest duvets feel stuffy. Next, target your pillows. Some struggling sleepers swear by placing their pillow in the fridge for a few minutes before hitting the hay. You could even invest in a Sobakawa, a Japanese pillow filled with buckwheat seeds that provide firm support for the head and neck while absorbing less heat.
2. Manage your body temperature
Once your bedding is sorted it’s time to concentrate on your body temperature. Take a cold shower as part of your nightly routine – it’ll rinse sweat from your body and mean that you hit the pillow feeling fresh and clean. Instead of heavy pyjama sets, consider sleeping naked. It may sound drastic, but nodding off without bedclothes has been proven to boost metabolism while keeping you cool. All that tossing and turning throughout the night can leave you feeling dehydrated, so drink a glass of cold water before putting your head down.
3. Circulate cool air
Ventilation is vital when trying to stay cool. Ideally, you’ll have an easy route for a breeze to enter one window and exit another placed at the opposite side of a room. However, this isn’t possible in many homes and you may have to carefully position fans close to open windows to circulate fresh air more quickly. Remember, you can also adjust the settings on ceiling fans so blades spin counter-clockwise and draw hot air up and out of the room.
4. Modify your mattress
If the heat of summer nights continues to disturb your sleep, you might want to consider moving your mattress or investing in a cooler alternative. Hot air rises, so you could try moving your bedding from a frame and sleeping on the floor, or if you have the option, try sleeping downstairs. When problems persist, you could swap your conventional heat-retaining mattress for a colder straw or bamboo mat.
5. Get creative
When all else fails, a water bottle filled with ice cold water is one of the more common ways to cool down in bed. Try placing the cool containers on pulse points around your body for a speedy drop in temperature. Then there’s the “Egyptian method”, where you dampen your sheets with cool water before using them as a blanket. Just remember to place a dry towel under your body to avoid soaking the mattress.
