January 21st, 2020 by Becky Calvert

Temperature plays a huge role in how well we sleep and it’s important that you can always drift off at a comfortable temperature to be able to have an undisturbed and deep sleep. With each change in season, you may have noticed that you start to find it more or less difficult to drift off to sleep and there’s a good reason for that! Here’s everything that you need to know about temperature and how it can impact your sleep…

Why Does Temperature Affect Sleep?

The answer to this is closely linked to a hormone that our brains produce at night time called melatonin – aka the sleep hormone. Melatonin senses when your surroundings are dark and starts to signal to your body that it’s time to prepare for sleep. During this process, your body starts to naturally drop in temperature as our perfect sleeping temperature is a couple of degrees lower than it is normally during the day. That’s why sleepless summer nights are often a common occurrence as it’s hard to sleep in overly warm environments. Sleep experts have suggested that the perfect sleeping temperature is between 60-68 degrees Fahrenheit but ultimately, everyone is slightly different so find the perfect temperature for you!

How Can You Improve Sleep Through Temperature?

Temperature is always changing and as a result, it can be hard to keep at the perfect temperature to sleep through every season. Luckily, there are things that you can do to help those winter and summer months not seem so bad to sleep in! Here’s what we’d recommend…

Spring and Summer

Some summer nights are horrendous to sleep in. To make them seem more bearable, make sure that you start to prepare your bedroom before you go to bed. Open the windows to help to cool down the space and invest in a good-quality fan. Place the fan on the oscillate setting and allow it to blow cold air throughout the room for a while before you go to bed and then you can place the fan near you so that you’re constantly feeling a cool breeze!

Autumn and Winter

Although your body likes to be colder than normal to sleep, that’s only by a couple of degrees and in winter, your body can feel much colder! Frosty winter nights can be unbearably cold and it can be hard to warm up without spending a fortune on your heating bills. That’s why we’d highly recommend an electric blanket. Electric blankets can be attached to your mattress or placed over your duvet and after you’ve picked the heat setting that’s right for you, it will start to warm you up and keep you at the perfect temperature! They also cost an average of just 2p per night to run so you won’t have to worry about high running costs.