Chapter 17
Ten Tips to Help You Turn Your Bedroom into a Sleep Sanctuary
In This Chapter
Adding new relaxing features
Eliminating distracting items
Unfortunately, many people who have trouble sleeping frequently associate their bedrooms with their inability to sleep. So even though you want your bedroom to be a sacred space, a sanctuary devoted to sleep, it becomes the last place on Earth you can fall asleep, no matter what you do.
In this chapter, we give you some savvy tips to help you turn your bedroom into a sleep sanctuary, so that the very thought of setting foot into your private retreat automatically makes your eyelids feel pleasantly heavy.
Note: If you try these suggestions, and also the tips we offer in Chapters 6 and 7, and you still can’t sleep, visit your doctor to find out if you have a sleep disorder.
Change the Lighting
The human brain responds to light cues from the environment, so if your bedroom is as dark as a funeral parlor or as bright as a noonday beach, you need to make some changes to make sure the daytime lighting is inviting and pleasant and the nighttime lighting is conducive to sleep.
During the night, your bedroom should be absolutely dark. Sleeping with lights on interferes with sleep and reduces the overall quality and amount of sleep you get.
Your bedroom can also be too bright, especially if you have east-facing windows that admit the light as soon as the sun peeks over the horizon. Bright light, especially from the morning sun, can enter the optic nerve even through closed eyes and signal your brain to reset its internal clock, waking you up sooner than you intended, which can mess up your sleep-wake cycle.
If bright morning light wakes you up too early, install light-blocking curtains or shades on your bedroom windows. Most stores that sell window coverings carry a good selection of light-blocking products. Just make sure the shade or curtain covers the window completely and doesn’t allow any light to leak from the corners or edges. Even a small beam of bright light is enough to wake you up if it hits your eyes in the morning.
The ideal lighting for a bedroom is warm, soft, and indirect. A couple of bedside lamps with 60-watt bulbs are great, especially if you use bulbs that simulate the full spectrum of natural light. General Electric’s Reveal light bulb is a good choice. Avoid fluorescent lighting because it can trigger headaches in sensitive individuals. However, fluorescent lighting with the new full-spectrum bulbs is fine, as long as the light fixture doesn’t blink, flicker, or hum annoyingly. If your bedroom has overhead lighting, use the lowest-watt bulb you can without making the room look too gloomy.
Keep Cool with a Ceiling Fan
One way to overcome the age-old argument about sleeping with the windows open or shut is to install a ceiling fan, which provides a cooling breeze without the chill that can come from an open window. (You know that freeze that sneaks up on you in the wee hours of the morning?) An extra bonus is the soothing noise a fan produces can help you sleep better.
In addition, a fan eliminates concerns about temperature fluctuations in the bedroom by evenly circulating heated or cooled air. A ceiling fan allows you to operate your air conditioner at a higher temperature, which saves on utility bills. You also can save money just by eliminating the drastic temperature changes that occur with an open window, changes that your heating or cooling systems have to work hard to overcome.
Most home stores have a wide selection of ceiling fans to complement any sort of decor. They come with step-by-step installation instructions for the do-it-yourselfers. If you prefer to have someone install the fan, installation can run anywhere from $100 to $200 per fan, depending on prevailing prices in your area and how many fans you’re installing. (Most electricians offer a per-fan discount if you’re installing more than one at a time.)
Get a Comfier Mattress
For some reason, many people who are faithful about changing their car’s tires and their furnace filters think they can sleep on the same worn-out, busted up mattress for years on end. If a certain spring has sprung and it jabs you in the ribs every night, you need a new mattress. If you wake up stiff and sore every morning, take the hint that your mattress and your back just aren’t a good match.
You deserve to sleep on a comfortable mattress that makes you feel good. A good mattress that properly supports your spine and body can help you sleep better. When your mattress is ultra comfortable, you actually start to associate it with sleeping, and that serves as another way to signal your brain that it’s time to rest.
Don’t buy a mattress just because your best friend recommends it or you like the advertisement you read in a magazine or online. Go to the store and lie down on a variety of mattresses until you find the one that feels just right for you. If you have a bedmate, take him or her with you so that you both can test the mattresses. (For more info on buying mattresses, see Chapter 7.)
Paint the Walls a Soothing Color
We don’t care what your high-dollar decorator says. Puce walls aren’t a good idea for a bedroom. Instead, choose soothing, comforting colors that make you feel embraced when you go to bed.
Try these good choices:
Pale blue: Blue is the color of both water and the sky, and it’s associated in literature and mythology with peace, joy, truthfulness, meditation, healing, tranquility, and sleep.
Pale yellow: In history, yellow is the color associated with the element of air. It’s a symbol of health, blessing, productivity, and creativity.
Pale pink: Pink combines the elements of air and fire and is associated with harmony, peacefulness, friendship, and affection.
White: White has always been associated with purity, happiness, strength, and spirituality.
Color preferences are a matter of individual choice. You may have a difficult time determining what color works best for you while just standing in a paint store with a dozen little color chips in your hand. You certainly don’t have to accept our suggestions as the only good color choices.
To find a color you like, invest in a pint can and paint half a wall to see what effect, if any, that color has on your feelings when you enter your bedroom. If the color jars you or does nothing, try another shade. You want a color that soothes you and makes you feel good when you enter the room. Over time, you may come to associate that color with sleeping well.
Add a Tabletop Fountain
Running water has a magical effect on the human ear (unlike the annoying drip, drip, drip of a leaky faucet). Both your heartbeat and your breathing slow down after you listen to running water for a while.
Fortunately, you can listen to the soothing sounds of running water every night without having to camp out in the woods, sleep in the bathroom, redo your plumbing, or buy a nature CD. You can find a wide selection of affordable, electrically operated tabletop fountains that bring the pleasant sound of running water into your bedroom.
Don’t put the fountain right next to your bed unless you don’t mind the mist it produces; instead put it on a nearby dresser and place a runner or mat underneath so that stray droplets of water don’t damage your furniture’s finish.
Use an Aromatherapy Diffuser
Aromatherapy diffusers waft scented oil throughout a room, adding a pleasant, sense-pleasing scent to the air. Pleasant smells encourage relaxation and good feelings, which in turn encourage sleep.
Diffusers use candles or electricity to heat the essential oils that provide the pleasant aroma. You can also get something called an aromatherapy nebulizer that sprays microscopic drops of scent throughout a room. Use the scents of jasmine and lavender, which both have the ability to help people relax and sleep better, in aromatherapy diffusers in bedrooms.
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Log on to http://essentialoil.com/diffuser.html for an affordable collection of aromatherapy diffusers. Prices range from $3.50 to $33.95.
Scent Your Bed Linens
If you don’t want to put an aromatherapy diffuser in your bedroom, you can still enjoy the benefits of nighttime aromatherapy by scenting your pillow and bed linens with an aromatherapy spray specifically designed to encourage relaxation and more pleasant sleep.
Many different companies now make these sprays so you have a wide variety of choices. Keep in mind that jasmine and lavender are the most sleep-friendly scents and choose a spray that seems pleasing to you. (You don’t want anything overpowering because that can have just the opposite effect on your senses; instead of feeling soothed and relaxed, strong scents like citrus, mint, and spice may make you feel energized and alert.)
“Home Office” Doesn’t Mean “Bedroom Office”
A home office in your bedroom can interfere with sleep, particularly if you have a deadline hanging over your head or your bills are due. Keeping those projects in the bedroom literally keeps them in your face. How can you ever fall asleep if your creditors are beckoning from a desk just two feet away from your pillow?
Or perhaps your bedroom looks like an electronics superstore with a computer, printer, scanner, flat screen TV, stereo system, and so on? Take the time to find a new home for all those toys. If you really want to make your bedroom a sleep sanctuary, you have to remove everything not associated with sleep.
Throw Out Decorative Items You Hate
We don’t care if your great Aunt Ditzy marches straight to the bedroom every single time she visits just to check and make sure you’re still displaying the chicken leg lamp she gave you for your birthday in 1984. If a decorative item doesn’t please your eye, get rid of it. This includes items that have sad memories associated with them (why are you still saving that corsage from the man who broke your engagement?) and for pieces you just actively hate.
Stuff that unleashes negative emotions doesn’t belong in your bedroom. Surround yourself instead with items that make you feel happy and peaceful when you look at them, things associated with happy memories and feelings. The idea is to create a sleep sanctuary where every single item in the room helps to create warm feelings and increases the room’s association, at least in your mind, with sleeping well.
Declutter
If your bedroom looks like a mini storage, chances are you aren’t sleeping well. Surrounding yourself with physical clutter increases your mental clutter as well. Ideally, make your bedroom as simple as possible, with only a bed, nightstand, dresser, and chair, along with a select few decorative items such as a lamp or jewelry box.
Bedrooms can easily get cluttered. Many families “clean up” for company by opening their bedroom doors and pitching whatever doesn’t belong in the den or family room into their bedrooms. Over time, these items can build into quite a mountain of junk.
If you have to pick your way through stacks of magazines and shopping bags or across a minefield of boxes holding who knows what, then you need to declutter your bedroom. Get some big trash bags and pitch everything that you don’t love or need, find a new home for the items you want to keep, and put everything else away where it belongs. After you get the junk cleared away, you’ll be surprised at how much more peaceful and reenergizing your slumber will be.