Your body changes temperature as you fall asleep. Having your room at the right climate can help you fall asleep, stay asleep, and improve the quality of your sleep, too, according to a 2012 study. (LINK: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3427038/)
Some prefer to sleep in a warmer room with light sheets, and others need a cold room and heavy sheets. If you’re lucky, you’re not dating someone from the opposite tribe.
To make things more complicated, most sleepers can’t even fall asleep if it’s too hot or too cold.
So, what do the experts have to say?
According to science, the best temperature for sleeping is around a cool 18°C (picture a nice spring day)
Your body is constantly in a process of cooling down, from the moment you go to bed to the time you wake up. It reaches its coolest point in the early morning hours before the sun kick starts your circadian rhythm and your body temperature starts to rise to prepare for the day.
Since a warmer body temperature is associated with being awake, it makes it super difficult for your body to get into sleep mode if it’s too hot in your room. On the flip side, being too cold won’t help much either, on the basic premise that your body needs a certain temperature of heat too, well, survive.
And so, achieving an optimal room temperature of around 18°C is a great way to improve your quality of sleep. When in doubt, also err on the colder side – your body is able to adjust much better to the cold than the heat, as the latter may disrupt its natural cooling processes worse.
