It’s almost an oxymoron – keep your room cool for a better night’s rest but be warm and cozy in your bed. Colder winter nights can leave you trying to find that balance between enjoying a room cool enough (65 degrees is recommended) for a great night’s rest and staying warm.
5 Ways to Feel Warm and Cozy and Sleep in a Cooler Room
Mother Nature designed it that way. The sun goes down and the temperature drops. Your core body temp falls, too, and you’re ready for bed. A cooling core body temperature is part of what gets us ready to sleep. But, now it’s cold outside. You want to sleep well – but you want to snuggle into bed and be warm. Here’s 5 ways to have be a warm person on a cold night – or a cool person in a warm bed.
- Exercise. Nope, don’t put on your running shoes. Do something simple like stretching. Stand with your feet at hip distance apart. Reach for the sky and tuck your hind-end in as you breathe in deeply. Not exhale and bring your arms back to your side. Repeat 10 or 12 times and you’ve raised your core temperature so it’s ready for a sleepy time cool down.
- Drink a hot drink. No caffeinated coffee or tea. No cocoa because it will have both sugar and caffeine to interfere with your sleep. Hot water with lemon and honey works and so do herbal teas. Again, you’re fooling your core by heating it up so it can start dropping.
- A hot bath or shower. This is many people’s go-to cure for falling asleep. Again, you heat up your core temperature and when you step out of the warm water, it starts to fall and you start to be sleepy – very sleepy!
- Don’t shut the heat off! You want a cool room – remember somewhere around 65 degrees is considered just right for deep sleep. A cold room is going to have you awake and shivering. Turn your thermostat down for the night (or set your programmable thermostat) but don’t turn it off.
- Plan your bedding! Seriously, think about your comfort when you make the bed. Wool blankets are great for retaining your body heat. Feather comforters will trap heat if they’re layered and are soft and lightweight. Don’t put so many blankets on the bed that you’re going to wake up sweating in the middle of the night or so few that you’re awake and shivering. Try to find “just right” and, then, fold another blanket at the foot of the bed so if you get cold you can pull up some extra warmth.
You can fool Mother Nature! By heating up your insides, you can go to bed feeling warm and still trigger that core cooling that, in turn, triggers sleep. Your mattress should be part of the equation. Some mattresses sleep so hot that they’re just not comfortable. Think natural – like that wool or feather comforter -- and consider a latex mattress that can breathe to keep you at a perfect sleeping temperature.
