10 tips for World Sleep Day

WORDS Debbie Loots COMPILED BY Chantel Hans

Wake up! It’s World Sleep Day today, 14 March, and in the spirit of getting everyone excited about the healthy and happy benefits of dossing eight hours a night, as well as warding off nasty sleep disorders, we compiled 10 tips to help make your bedroom a more sleep-friendly haven.

Why all this hoo-ha about such a simple and basic human function? Well, according to the World Association of Sleep Medicine’s World Sleep Day committee, sleeplessness is a global epidemic, and people don’t realise the effect of a good night’s rest on health and happiness. An annual drive founded back in 2008, World Sleep Day wants to make people aware of just how good a good snooze is and so prevent and manage sleep disorders. This they think will lighten the burden of sleep problems on society at large. With less than one third of people seeking professional help for sleep problems, it seems that most are unaware that tossing and turning at night, and waking up often aren’t normal and are treatable.

Sounds like you? Check out our bed-experts’ tips and give it a try. It may just be the thing you need to help count away the sheep, happily ever after…

• Most importantly they say, is to invest in the best quality mattress and base possible. Even go as far as to have the position you sleep in assessed before you buy a bed.
• Then get a super fab 100% cotton pillow. If you don’t do feathers, get it with micro fibre filling – it will hold its shape for longer.
• Get the tog of your inner duvet just right. For summer, the perfect weight is around 4.5 tog and in winter, for the very cold nights, 13.5 tog. Wonder what’s a tog? It’s a rating that shows a duvet’s ability to trap warm air, the higher the tog, the warmer the duvet.
• Only sleep in quality cotton linen, it will keep your skin breathing.
• Next is: sleep in the dark! Even when it’s light. Invest in 100% block out curtain lining and you won’t wake up when the sun does. Some 25mm venetian blinds hung behind your curtains can also do the trick.
• And, for goodness sake, if you can tear yourself away from your cellphone so that you two sleep in separate rooms while it’s charging its own batteries, just do it! For the sake of peaceful sleep.
• Make sure your aircon blows over your bed and not directly on top of you.
• Some say go with natural colours in the bedroom for undisturbed sleep, other say throw together whatever colours take your fancy, just make it yours, that’s comfort enough.
• If possible, have a separate space in your room for simply sitting, reading and relaxing. Try to keep your sleep space only for sleeping.
• Finally, soft carpets and fluffy rugs create a sense of cosiness in the bedroom. Team that with soft scatter cushions on the bed, those you can just flop on top of, bury your head among and fall into heavenly sleep in. Yes, those.

And then, it’s good night!

We’re giving away a luxurious Java Silk queen-sized duvet inner and two pillows. Enter here. 

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