Styling your bedroom for better sleep
When it comes to decorating your bedroom, there are many things to take into consideration. Style, of course, but also function. Are you using your space in the best possible way? Do you have enough storage? Does it look cool? But there’s one more thing you should take into account next time you’re doing a little redecorating: your sleep.
There are so many different factors that can affect your ability to fall and stay asleep. Lifestyle choices are a big contributor, as are the products most directly connected to sleep (like your mattress, pillow and bed frame). But don’t forget that your bedroom environment plays a major role as well. Things like wall colour (along with lighting and room layout) can affect your mood, stress level and ability to get the sleep you really need.
Colour Affects Your Mood
Simply going about your day to day life, you are sure to notice how colour can affect your mood. Some colours just make you feel happier, while others can seem more depressing or sultry or exciting. And there’s research to back those feelings up! Cooler colours have shorter wavelengths, which have been shown to evoke more relaxing feelings than warmers colours like red, which can be more stimulating. One report even found exposure to blue and green was correlated with calming physical responses, including lower pulse rate and blood pressure.
Beyond just the colour itself, you also have to take into account its particular saturation and brightness as well. The saturation refers to the purity of the colour, while the brightness refers to its relative lightness or darkness. Colours that are highly saturated but less bright (think: jewel tones) can be energising, while those that are bright but less saturated (like a bright sage green) are known to be more relaxing.
Colour Affects Your Temperature
Research has also shown that rooms painted in warmer colours, like reds and oranges, can actually make us feel like the temperature is warmer than ones painted with cool colours like blues and greens. Recently, the US paint brand Valspar teamed up with a research laboratory to explore this phenomenon. The participants were placed in three separate rooms; each one was set to the ambient temperature of 19°C, but painted different colours. When asked to record the temperature they felt in their room, 28% felt coolest in the one painted navy blue.
This small survey reinforces an idea that colour plays a big role in shaping our perceptions. The colour of your bedroom walls may not only impact how hot or cold you feel, they can also affect how calm or relaxed you are when you get into bed at night—and how much sleep you end up getting.
Colour Affects Your Sleep
Given all of these different factors, much of the research suggests that cooler colours are best for the bedroom, like blue or green. In fact, according to a 2013 survey from Travelodge, participants who slept in bedrooms painted blue slept the longest and woke up the happiest out of any other wall colour.
If you can’t actually paint your bedroom walls, don’t worry. There are plenty of ways to incorporate colour into your room through furniture, bedding and art.