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I was a bad sleeper. I often had trouble falling asleep, I was easily woken up because I wasn’t sleeping deeply, I tossed and turned, and I woke up tired, sometimes with headaches, even after a long night’s sleep. Over the past year, I have slowly adjusted every aspect of how I slept, from the bed itself to the climate, sound, and lights in my room, and ultimately solved most of my sleep problems. Here's everything I recommend, based on a variety of sleep-related challenges.
It’s critical to your sleep for your body to think it's nighttime. Luckily, there are a number of brands that offer smart blackout shades, so you can block out all the light from your windows with one command. I installed Rolli shades, a colleague enjoyed Smartwingz, but I’m also excited about Switchbot’s Roller Shade, coming in February, which will be inexpensive and adjustable for any window's width.
An alternative is a mask, and I believe I found the holy grail of smart sleep masks: The Aura is pillow soft, even if you sleep on your side. You can place scented lavender layers inside, and then use the Aura app to set up meditation or white noise programs to listen to, or you can simply use the mask as a Bluetooth speaker for any music you like. There are lights inside the mask, so you can set an alarm and it will gently bring up the lights like a sunrise to wake you up. It controls all your senses, and while I’ve never been a sleeping mask kind of person and found the idea of a scented smart mask absurd, it is legitimately relaxing and effective for me.
On nights that I know I need to go to sleep but am not quite ready for it yet, I get into bed with my Kindle, turn off my overhead lights and turn on a calming program on my Nanoleaf lights. They project calming waves of light and motion across the room, and I find they truly affect your mood.
If anxiety or a busy mind is keeping you from sleeping, your voice assistant might help. Whether you use Siri, Alexa, or Google, let your assistant remind you of all your calendar items for the next day, so you don’t feel like you’re forgetting something. If thoughts often pop into your head as you’re about to go to sleep, you can ask your voice assistant to remind you of them tomorrow rather than staying awake ruminating on them. (You can also use them to check to make sure smart appliances are off so you don’t have to get back up.)
An inability to stay asleep can be attributed to a number of factors like climate and distractions, but ultimately, the solution lies in how comfortable your body is in bed, and how well supported your body is, which is decidedly un-technological. While there are a number of websites and even apps to help you choose beds, I found there is no substitute for going to a store and laying on each bed to try them out, and choosing the one right for you. Particularly if you are larger or suffer from body aches, you may want to choose a bed that is made more traditionally with coils, rather than foam. Where foam may be helpful is pillows. Moving away from the traditional pillow shapes full of down, choose foam shapes that work for your body, not just under your head but between your knees or behind your back. I really liked Bearaby pillow shapes, particularly the Cuddler, which is a long body pillow you can wrap around you.
You can use your smart speaker to drown out random noise in the background that might startle you. First, use your voice assistant to turn your devices to “do not disturb” while you sleep. Your smart speaker offers white noise options: You can ask your assistant to play a standard white noise, but there are also a plethora of natural options like whale song and rainforest. You can adjust the sound level as needed using your voice. Of course, if you prefer, you can listen to music, too.
I have found that having multiple forms of climate control works best. I have smart air conditioner units and heaters. For the A/C, I rely on my Midea U-Shaped Smart A/C, which I’ve had for a few years; it works with my voice assistants and powers on and off on a smart routine in Google Home. For heat, I use a Smart Envi wall heater, which works the same way.
Adding climate control to my bed was the chef’s kiss. The BedJet 3 shoots hot or cold air into your bed, either into a pillowy top sheet or directly on you, under your top sheet or blanket. You can tune it to cold or hot air from the phone app or a remote, but it will also allow you to create custom programs for the whole night. My favorite feature turns out to be a ten minute blast of 110 degree air which is perfect for slipping into bed on cold nights or for frosty toes first thing in the morning.
The solutions aren’t all technical, either. Some sheets (brushed cotton) are made for hot sleepers, and some for cool sleepers (linen), and choosing the right sheets can make a big difference for you.
I often woke up with headaches or sinus issues, which I thought were due to having air blowing directly at me. A fan that I can actually stand is any Dreo model—they have a “natural” setting that mimics a breeze. Also, you can really clean a Dreo fan—they come completely apart—which means less dust blowing around, which can aggravate sinuses. I added in a smart air purifier that adjusts on the fly as needed to the conditions in my room. I use a Mila in my room to remove dust, pollen and dander, and my headaches and congestion went away.
It also helped to adjust the angle at which I sleep. Many brands offer electric base layers that will turn any bed into an adjustable one, where you can lift your head, knees, or feet. I chose one from BedJet, called the Power Layer. Subtle adjustments can keep your head upright enough to stop you from snoring, or alleviate a stuffed up nose. You use a remote or an app to connect to make adjustments.
If you’re wondering if you’re a snorer, an app like SnoreLab will provide very humbling evidence by listening to you overnight. This can be the push you need to get a sleep apnea test, which you can now do at home using, you got it, smart monitoring devices.
How well you’re sleeping isn’t only how long you slept. I started measuring the quality of my sleep using my Oura ring. This wearable device uses heart rate, respiration, skin and body temperature, movement, and heart rate variability to create a sleep efficiency score. Using the metrics above, Oura determines when you enter REM and deep sleep, and for how long.
While seeing how long I was in bed for versus sleeping was often disheartening, if eye opening, the efficiency score created by those metrics was more usable for determining how effective various changes I made to my sleeping ritual were. Oura provides an overall sleeping score daily as well, which is a mix of the efficiency, how much activity you had while you slept tossing and turning, how much time you spent in REM or deep sleep, and how quickly you fell asleep. If you don’t like the idea of a wearable, you can try non-wearables like a Chilipad Sleep Tracker or Withins Sleep Tracking Pad.
