How To Get a Better Night’s Sleep

How To Get a Better Night’s Sleep How To Get a Better Night’s Sleep
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Blackout Blinds Can Help You Get Some Sleep



We’ve all been there, laying in the early hours’ gloom with sleep evading us.


A clock on a bedside table with a person behind having a bad night's sleepTime ticks by, but your mind won’t stop and your eyes won’t shut. Soon it’s time for you to get up and go to work, but you feel as ready to face the day as you did eight hours earlier when you first crawled into bed.


Sleep deprivation is nasty business, and it’s not just that it turns you into a grumpy old so-and-so. It can make you lose weight, gain weight, become dangerously clumsy and bring about the onset of heart disease, diabetes and early death. As if you didn’t have enough to keep you awake at night…


But hey, let’s not get carried away here. There are some simple ways to get a better night’s kip, the main one being to make sure your bedroom is a safe-haven for snoozing.


How can a blackout blind help me sleep?


You need total darkness to sleep fitfully. Your body has a natural alarm clock that starts the waking process when it detects sunlight and starts to wind your body down when the sun sets. Obviously, we’re quite capable of overriding this body-clock but you may find that you wake earlier in the spring and summer months when the sun rises earlier. A way to keep out the light is to black-out your windows with a blind.


If you’re a light sleeper, the Spring and Summer sunlight will cause you issues earlier and earlier in the morning, and you’ll be regular disturbed in your sleep: especially when the dawn chorus gets into the swing of things. Those birds can chirp all they like when you have a blackout blind, but the thicker material deadens the sound a lot better.


Blackout blinds are thicker than dimout blinds and do not permit any light to sneak through the weave. They come in all sorts of patterns and colours and look very stylish.


If you work night shifts or have a child that takes naps during the day, this is the blind you need. It banishes sunlight and can even help to keep temperatures down in the room during the summer months.











Does it have to be a blackout blind?


A lot of people are opting for sheer and voile fabrics in their bedrooms for more interior design purposes than practical reasons, but there is evidence to suggest that you will sleep a lot better in absolute darkness. Go for thicker fabrics in the bedroom.


The Victorians did it right – they loved thick, luxurious fabrics for heavy curtains, meaning no light whatsoever would enter the room. Also, the fact that the light bulb wasn’t invented until 1879 (see, all those pub quizzes paid off) probably means there was a lot less light to try to block out.


Anyway, the point is this: blackout blind fabric is made to keep out any light outside: sunlight, street lights, shop signs and headlights. It also gives you absolute privacy and doubles up as a nifty cinema screen if you ever want to project a movie on to it.


What else can help me sleep?


The reoccurring theme here is this: you need to hold your sleep in high regard and ensure your bedroom is geared towards providing you with the best night’s sleep possible.


Alongside purchasing a blackout blind, consider your mattress, whether it is too hard or too soft for your liking. Is your bed too close to a radiator, meaning you wake in the night feeling hot? Perhaps you have too many electronic devices in the room, their pin-prick standby lights casting just enough light to catch your attention.


Identifying and fixing these small parts in your room will help you fall asleep easily and stay asleep due to the lack of factors trying to wake you.


Also, take a look at your lifestyle and see where you can make changes to nurture a better night’s sleep. Caffeine before bed, eating too much before trying to sleep, lack of exercise, anxiety and worry and many other things can keep you from sleeping.


Try to spot these causes and make active, positive changes. Take up yoga, write a to-do list before bed, read a book and stay away from tablets, phones and laptops. Don’t bring your work home with you and swap a nightcap for a warm, milky drink before bed. All of these things help slow your body down and prepare it for relaxation.


A zen styled bedroom with candles and pebbles and light colours to create a relaxing atmosphere


Practical tips for anyone reading this at 3am


A practical tip for all you insomniacs reading this blog post at three in the morning, desperate for something substantial to try, this is for you: control your breathing. We had a look around the internet and it seems an effective way to get to sleep.


To help you fall asleep you need to slow down your brain, and to do this you need to slow the blood flow around your body, so you need to slow your heart rate to a more sleep-like speed. You can do this by controlling your breathing. Slow, easy breaths spaced out naturally, as though you were meditating, will eventually calm your mind and induce a sleep-like state in the brain, sending you off to the Land of Nod. Hopefully that helps!


Shop for your sleep-assisting blackout blind here.










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