Top Tips for Summer Lazy Days
09 Aug 2019
15 Mar 2019
The best way to ensure a restful night of sleep is to make sure you’re relaxed and ready to drift off before you even get in bed. Some great methods include drinking a warm (but not caffeinated) drink, having a bath or reading your favourite book. It is advised to avoid screens, especially phone or computer screens, for the hour leading up to bedtime, as this will allow your mind to prepare itself for rest.
There’s nothing worse than getting into bed and realizing it’s far too cold and you probably should have changed the sheets a week ago. Make sure your duvet cover is clean, your pillows are nice and plump and there isn’t a pile of laundry at the foot of the bed. You could even use a heated mattress cover or under blanket for an hour before getting into bed to make sure it’s the perfect sleep temperature when you lay down. We love the heated under blanket by Beurer, or if you want a more tech-savvy way of heating there’s the Konnect Smart Heated Mattress Cover that lets you control the temperature from your phone.
Get changed into your comfiest pyjamas, gather your army of childhood teddies (we’ve all got at least one) and lay your head down for a night of lovely, refreshing sleep. If you still need just that little bit of extra warmth, there’s the Cosy Heated Blanket or Heated Cushion by Beurer to kick up the snuggle factor. Making sure you’re warm enough in bed can really improve the quality of sleep you get, as well as helping you to fall asleep more easily, so it’s worth taking extra steps to achieve optimum bed temperature.
Sometimes this isn’t as simple as it sounds; you just can’t switch your mind off and this prevents you from falling asleep. There are a few techniques to help you relax your mind once you’re in bed, like meditation or listening to a sleep podcast. Most smartphones have the option to set a sleep timer when podcasts are playing, so it switches itself off after a set amount of time (by which point you will hopefully be in dreamland). You could try connecting your phone to a speaker like this Crescent Bluetooth Speaker by Goodmans to avoid the often tinny built-in phone speaker blaring next to your head (just make sure to turn the volume low). As obvious as it sounds, make sure your phone is on silent so your sleep isn’t broken up by texts and emails coming through.
If you’ve got no commitments the following day, just let yourself wake up naturally after your body has achieved the amount of rest it needs. If you do need to wake up at a certain time, make sure to set an alarm on your phone or even using an old-school alarm clock like the Auric LCD Alarm Clock by Acctim, which features a crescendo alarm that wakes you up gently. As tempting as it might be to hit the snooze button, try to avoid this as it can make you feel much more tired and groggy when you do eventually get out of bed.
