Photo by CC user Charles Wagner on Flickr.
A big part of our lives is spent totally unconscious, lying on a special corner of a room, vividly hallucinating and rejuvenating our brain chemicals at the same time. That’s right, we’re talking about sleep. Sleep is a key part of our lives, and without it we literally stop functioning, so why is it that some people can sleep soundly every night without an issue and others struggle to get even 5 mins in a perfectly cosy bed after a long day?
Sometimes the answer is mental, maybe you’re overly stressed at work, maybe you don’t know how to relax enough to drift off, or maybe your room is too dirty to allow for relaxed and satisfying sleep. Before running off to sort all of that out, though, you should first examine your bed. It could be time to hop onto Koala Mattress online and replace the old mattress with something that was made this century.
Better Pillows
The pillow is the ultimate test of pickiness in any guest or friend that spends the night.
A pillow is almost always too lumpy or too soft, or too thin or too thick or not hard enough or not feathery enough. You will find you have these same wants and needs in a pillow when you stay elsewhere, so why settle for what’s not good for you in your own bed? Feather pillows are old news, and by and large they aren’t good for your neck, so consider upgrading to a new memory foam pillow, which can actually support your spine.
Temperature Trap
With your pillow sorted, it’s time to move on to the room itself, or more importantly, the temperature of the room. Sleeping in a hot room is nearly impossible, and sleeping in a freezing cold room is sometimes doable depending on your coverings, but we’ll cover that a little later. If you can control the temperature in your room via a thermostat, between 15 degrees celsius and 18 degrees celsius is the ideal temperature for restful human sleep. For a few nights, play around with the temperature between those points, and see for yourself the benefits of a medium-cool room.
Old Mattress Blues
Your pillow is set, and your room is temperate, so now we move onto the main event, the mattress. An old, lumpy mattress is less than ideal for your sleeping purposes, and spring mattresses are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Memory foam, just like the pillow mentioned above, seems to be the way to go these days, and more importantly it lasts a lot longer than a spring mattress ever could, so there’s no needing to replace in 10yrs.
The Ideal Coverings
When it comes to what you cover yourself with, preference is as important as the coverings themselves. If you like a doona, a doona is what you need. A blanket person will almost always flourish beneath blankets more than anything else, and in some climates all you need is a sheet. Use your discretion with this choice, but take heart in knowing the result isn’t as final as buying an expensive mattress, and there are always ways to try a different bed covering.
Sound Escape
You’re now in a temperate room, with a good pillow, a new mattress, a great covering, and you only have to deal with that noise from outside and the best night’s sleep you’ve ever had will be well within your grasp. If you are in a metropolitan area that has high noise pollution, it might be worth getting a white noise machine to cover up the sounds of the rowdy night life, and if the lights are bothering you, blackout curtains are a great way to block every single light in the entire world out.
There you have it, the ingredients to the perfect night’s sleep, laid bare in front of you. Much simpler to achieve than previously thought, and now you can use this article as a checklist on your next shopping trip.
