Nearly one in five Britons are tossing and turning at night, with bedroom temperatures often to blame for disrupted sleep. To combat this, experts suggest a myriad of solutions, from steering clear of caffeine before bedtime to the quirky tip of refrigerating socks for those overheated evenings.
But there’s another trick gaining traction, one that’s commonplace overseas yet relatively unheard of on British shores: separate duvets for you and your partner. Sleep specialist James Wilson, also known as The Sleep Geek, is a staunch advocate of this approach for achieving slumber bliss.
He recommends: “If you have a partner, sleep with two duvets instead of one. Usually in Northern European countries, like Denmark or Norway, couples have two duvets, so each person has their own when sleeping.”
“They think we in the UK are bonkers – why would you share a duvet? If you’re a hot sleeper, laying next to someone, they’re coming into your side of the bed, that makes you hot! ” “Women in particular, because of the week before and during your period, your core temperature is a little bit too hot for sleep. So if you’ve got someone next to you, making you hotter, that’s not good.”
Wilson elaborates: “Also, you might like a light duvet to sleep with, but your partner might still like a heavy duvet – one person in this relationship becomes the sleep dictator.”.
“That person says this is the duvet we’re having and you can end up with ‘duvet wars’ where one person is saying, ‘I’ve got the duvet, I’d like more of the duvet’, or ‘No, we’re having this [type of] duvet’, you end up in this sort of battle. With separate duvets, they not only give a better temperature for sleep, but also stop you fighting over the duvet too. Win, win.”
TikTok user Cecilia Blomdahl from Svalbard in Norway shared her “ultimate” hack for a good night’s sleep, which involves leaving her duvets and sheets out for hours. Her most recent video on the subject has been viewed more than 3.8 million times.
In an earlier video, she explained that the first rule for fresh sheets is to “always air out your duvets as often as you can. If you can at least once a week and especially good if it’s outside in the cold weather. It just makes them so fresh and airy and amazing.”
