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Britain’s sleep has never been worse. Study after study finds we are sleeping for shorter periods with, in many cases, poor quality rest to boot.
Indeed the latest research from The Sleep Charity suggests a staggering 90 per cent of UK adults have sleep problems.
I am not immune myself. A combination of under-the-weather kids, a husband who gets up at 5am to exercise, and the hyper-sensitive hearing I seem to have developed since becoming a mum means I rarely get a perfect night.
For those suffering from poor sleep, it might be tempting to throw money at the problem.
Enter John Lewis, which is now selling a £12,460 duvet – the Ultimate Collection Made To Order Icelandic Eiderdown Winter Weight Duvet, to be specific.
The store claims the duvet, designed to fit an emperor bed, ‘provides unsurpassed insulation’ thanks to ‘lightweight and fluffy’ eider duck down hand-collected in Iceland.
It sounds impressive, but do you really need to spend a fortune for a good night’s rest?
Absolutely not, says sport sleep coach Nick Littlehales – who has worked with Premier League football teams and Olympians.
‘Why would you buy something so expensive you’ll feel you have to keep it for 30-odd years when, within two months, 10 to 15 per cent of the weight of it will be your dead skin scales and perspiration?’
All of this gunk provides fertile feeding ground for dust mites, whose droppings can cause allergies in some people.
‘Allergens can affect breathing during the night,’ explains Nick. ‘They can make it difficult to breathe through the nose, resulting in snoring, sleep apnoea and dry mouth – all of which can potentially disturb sleep.’
So when it comes to beds and bedding, what will boost your chances of the perfect night’s sleep? Here is the ultimate guide…
MATTRESS
Forget the number of pocket springs or the type of memory foam. The best way to buy a mattress is to go in blind – ideally to both the specifications and the price, according to Dr Neil Stanley, author of How To Sleep Well.
‘The only thing that’s important is whether it’s comfortable,’ he says.
‘In order to let us fall asleep, our brains have to feel we are safe and secure,’ adds Nick Littlehales.
Part of that feeling comes from being comfortable – and not, for example, feeling pressure on our hips from too firm a mattress.
‘Not hard, not soft, just completely balanced where you can’t feel a thing.’
Broadly speaking, if you weigh under 70kg, you might want to start looking at soft mattresses, if you’re between 70kg and 100kg, at medium, and more than 100kg at firm.
But the only way to know for sure if a mattress is comfortable is by testing to see how it supports you – what’s good for your back is good for your sleep. ‘Your spine needs to be straight when you’re lying on your side and when you’re lying on your back, you should be able to put a flat hand under the base of your spine,’ says Neil.
‘You should also lie on a mattress for at least ten minutes. Don’t sit on it or press it, lie on it in all the different positions that you lie in when you’re asleep – not just straight out on your back,’ adds Neil. ‘If after ten minutes it’s not comfortable, it’s not the one for you.’
If you share a bed with a partner with different needs, Nick suggests investing in zip and link mattresses – two singles zipped together, where you both get the tension of mattress that works for you.
Try:
One side is medium and the other side is firm, meaning that partners of different sizes and weights can both sleep comfortably.
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PILLOWS
‘Pillows are to your head and neck what the mattress is to your body,’ says Neil.
‘When you’re on your side, your head and neck should be in a straight line with the rest of your spine.’
You can now get adjustable pillows that allow you to vary the firmness and level of support by adding in or removing filling. These can be a good option if you can’t try a pillow when you buy the mattress.
From the experts’ perspective it’s less about how soft or firm the pillow is and more about if it can support your head and neck so your spine is in a straight line because, as with a mattress, this is best for health and sleep.
Nick Littlehales recommends avoiding anything that bills itself as ‘orthopaedic’ or similar. ‘Anything that claims to look after your neck, or hold your neck in a certain position is nonsense because you don’t sleep in a fixed position for eight hours. You’ll end up uncomfortable.’
He’s also a firm advocate of changing your pillows regularly.
‘Whatever your budget, think about whether you can afford to change that pillow every three months.’
The reason? Pillows quickly absorb oils, sweat and skin cells, which can lead to dust mites. This can then affect how well you breathe in your sleep.
Try:
It comes with a handy zip that allows you to remove some of the stuffing if you feel your pillow is too full. Or, if you have the opposite problem, you can buy additional 200g bags of wool to add in.
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DUVETS
The right duvet is vital to sleep because being too hot or too cold indicates to your brain that you are not safe – leaving you unable to relax.
According to Neil, you need to lose about one degree of your normal body temperature in order to get a good night’s rest.
‘The tog rating is a measure of thermal resistance or how quickly the heat we generate in our bodies is dissipated,’ explains Nick.
Again, the filling is personal choice, but so is the tog rating.
‘A duvet that’s comprised of two separate duvets, a low tog and a medium tog that can be used together to make a high tog gives you a lot of flexibility,’ says Neil.
But, again, both experts point out that partners will frequently have different requirements when it comes to duvets.
You might want to consider a modular duvet, where you can have different tog ratings on each side – or even two separate duvets.
Try:
If you don’t want to go down the separate duvet route, these allow each person to customise their side, choosing from three fillings – plant-based lyocell, alpaca wool or sheep’s wool – and four different tog ratings.
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BED LINEN
You might favour bold colours but white is best for bed linen, says Nick.
‘Your bedroom should be a sanctuary and white creates a sense of calm,’ he says.
He will also allow ‘pastels or colours inspired by nature – because nature-like shades should encourage our body to follow a circadian rhythm of sleeping at night’.
And if Nick has his way, you’d buy seven sets. Yes, seven. And he says that they don’t have to be super high thread count Egyptian cotton that costs the earth – as long as they’re comfortable for you.
‘I’d rather you bought seven sets of linen that cost £20 each so that you could put fresh sheets on every day, than one set that cost £1,000,’ he says.
‘If you put clean, fresh linen on a bed, you immediately have an expectation that you’re going to sleep well. It’s a bit cooler, it’s a bit fresher.’
And sometimes that’s half the battle – if we think we’ll sleep well, we are more likely to.
Nick recommends synthetic but lightweight materials such as microfibre – partly because they’re more likely to be hypo-allergenic, but also because they can be washed on a very low temperature and dry very quickly, meaning that if you are changing the linen several times a week, the environmental impact is minimised.
‘But if you can’t do without your Egyptian cotton, then go for a thread count of around 300, which will offer you the best natural breathability,’ he says.
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These tick all of Nick’s boxes for affordable, hypoallergenic linen that washes and dries quickly.
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