Sleeping well is incredibly important for your overall health. In fact, most experts rank it right alongside diet and exercise when it comes to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The problem is that there are a huge number of factors that can affect your overall quality of sleep. Among these various aspects, temperature is undoubtedly one of the most important. With this in mind, we’ve developed this handy guide to assist you in finding your optimal sleep temperature so that you can get the sleep you need to tackle life head-on.
How Temperature Affects Your Quality of Sleep
Everyone has experienced nights where they either couldn’t sleep or slept poorly because they were too hot or cold. In purely physiological terms, being too cold tends to affect your overall quality of sleep more than being too hot. However, this doesn’t take into account bedding and any clothing you might wear to bed. What this means is that in real-life scenarios, sleeping in a room that is too hot is usually worse. Essentially, you can always use extra blankets if you’re too cold, but it is much more difficult to cool down when the room is too warm.
Studies have shown that sleeping in a room that is too hot leads to more restless sleep. In turn, this can decrease the amount of slow-wave sleep, which is the time you sleep the deepest. What’s more, this problem is only increased when your sleep environment is both hot and humid.
What Is the Ideal Temperature for Sleeping
Most studies have shown that the ideal sleeping temperature for adults is between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit, whereas infants should usually sleep in an environment that is a few degrees warmer. In reality, though, the optimal sleep temperature will vary quite a bit from person to person. Moreover, factors such as your bedding and clothing will also play a role in determining how warm or cool your room should be in order to maximize your sleep quality. Finally, whether or not you sleep next to a partner can also have an impact due to the added body heat.
Finding Your Perfect Personal Sleep Temperature
In some ways, finding out which temperature you sleep best in really comes down to trial and error. The simplest way to do this is to experiment with setting your thermostat to different temperatures and then keep track of how well you slept at each thermostat setting. Of course, this type of experiment will work best when all of the other factors that can affect both your quality of sleep and your temperature are the same. This means sleeping in the same bedding, wearing the same clothes, going to bed at the same time, etc.
Your bedding and what clothing you wear to bed will play a major role in finding your optimal sleeping temperature. For instance, people who sleep nude or in only their underwear tend to sleep better when the room is slightly warmer as compared to people who sleep in pajamas. The warmth of your bedding is also important. If you’re like most people and tend to switch to thicker, warmer bedding during the winter months, you’ll probably find that you sleep best in a slightly cooler room during this time. Alternatively, you may want your bedroom to be a few degrees warmer if you’re one of those that prefer to only use a sheet during the hot summer months.
Coming to a Compromise With Your Partner
The fact that heat and cold play such an important role in the overall quality of your sleep means it is well worth putting in the time to determine your own ideal sleeping temperature. Still, not every person’s optimal temperature is the same, which may mean trying to reach a compromise with your partner or spouse. In this sense, things like using extra blankets, sleeping in warmer clothing, or using a heated blanket or mattress pad may offer the ideal solution to ensure you and your partner both stay at your own ideal comfort levels throughout the night.
Heating and Cooling Services You Can Trust
Properly regulating the temperature inside your home is obviously key to ensuring that your room stays as warm or cool as you want it throughout the night. There may come a time when you find that your heating or air condition system simply isn’t able to maintain the temperature you need to sleep peacefully. Should this happen, don’t hesitate to contact TS Heat & Air. With more than 30 years of experience serving customers in the Oklahoma City area, our award-winning team of HVAC experts is here to help with all your heating and cooling, indoor air quality, and new construction needs.
