Create the perfect sleeping environment

Do you have the Perfect Sleep Environment? Do you even know what the Perfect Sleep Environment should look like?

According to The Sleep Council, it’s not just about looks, but light, temperature, feel and even smell!

Says Sleep Council spokesperson Jessica Alexander: “Creating – and maintaining – the perfect sleep environment is an essential and logical part of achieving the best possible quality of sleep – something we can all appreciate is vital for health and wellbeing. Public health campaigns constantly remind us about the essentials of good diet and exercise but there’s no advice about sleep.”

The Sleep Council has teamed up with sleep expert Kathleen McGrath to create an online tool which highlights the key elements of the Perfect Sleep Environment. It will be interactive so users can see at a glance the effect changing different elements in a bedroom can have on your sleep quality.

www.perfectsleepenvironment.org.uk features a bedroom graphic that focuses on the five key ingredients for creating the perfect sleep environment: temperature, light, distraction, comfort and relaxation.

A perfect sleep environment should be:

• Just the right temperature – between 16 and 18 degrees centigrade. Feeling too hot or too cold in the night can lead to restless sleep and wakefulness.
• Kept dark. Light is a common sleep ‘robber’ so investing in a good pair of well lined curtains which keep the light out and the room dark can be really helpful.
• Free from distractions. So lose the laptop, the mobile, the computer games, the television and anything else that is likely to distract from the serious business of sleep!
• And central to comfortable is a good supportive bed – the bigger the better (for less partner disturbance) and as good as the budget can stretch to: we spend a third of our life in bed so why compromise on the cost of a good night’s sleep?
• The bedroom should be an oasis of calm and tranquillity – uncluttered and devoted to the land of dreams.

The Perfect Sleep Environment micro-site is also accessible through The Sleep Council’s main site – www.sleepcouncil.org.uk, and provides an opportunity to ‘Ask the Expert’ questions about concerns with sleeping. Users simply click a link, leave their question and a trained professional will be in touch within 24 hours.