Not getting enough sleep can have serious health consequences, but there are a few things that you can do to be sure you’re catching enough winks. One of those tactics might come as a surprise: it turns out that you can actually improve sleep quality just by changing the color and decoration of your bedroom! Let’s see how that happens, and what else you can do to get a good night’s sleep.
Insufficient Sleep: A Public Health Issue
Adults throughout the country aren’t getting enough sleep. The CDC reports that roughly a third of adults don’t get enough sleep on a regular basis, leading to countless issues ranging from difficulty concentrating on tasks to unintentionally falling asleep or nodding off to workplace and automotive accidents. This doesn’t even touch longer-term health problems that might be related to insufficient sleep, like heart disease and cancer.
Changing Room Color Can Help
It turns out that painting your bedroom a soothing color can actually help you to sleep more. People who slept in rooms painted blue reported that they woke up feeling happier than those in rooms painted other shades, and also slept longer: 7.86 hours in total. Compare this to people who slept in orange rooms, who tended to only get 7.46 hours.
Other Ways to Change Your Bedroom
Even if you don’t want to take on the project of repainting your bedroom (or if you’re just not a fan of blue), there are plenty of other ways that you can modify your sleeping quarters to ensure a good night’s rest. Try to keep TVs and computers out of the bedroom, or at least make sure that any screen emitting blue light is covered when it’s time for bed. If any light comes through your window at night, try some new curtains. Finally, make an effort to use your bed for sleeping rather than hanging out in your bedroom during the day.
What have you done to your room to make sleeping easier? Has it worked?
Sources:
- https://visual.ly/sweet-dreams-secret-good-nights-sleep
- https://www.cdc.gov/features/dssleep/
- https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/17/cheating-ourselves-of-sleep/