March 9 is the beginning of Sleep Awareness Week, an annual event created by the National Sleep Foundation to promote better sleep and increase overall health and well-being. It’s also the time when the NSF releases the findings from its annual Sleep in America® poll. This year’s poll focused on the link between teens’ sleep health and mental health. You can read all the results of the poll, which found 8 out of 10 teens don’t get enough sleep.
For young and old, the NSF recommends six steps for healthy sleep including spending time in bright light each day, exercising regularly, keeping consistent mealtimes, avoiding alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine before bedtime, implementing a wind-down routine, and creating a good sleep environment. We’ve delved into each of these steps in our journal articles but thought now was the perfect time to consider one aspect of creating a good sleep environment that falls directly in our wheelhouse—ensuring a hygienic bed.
Recognize a Few Facts to Improve Your Bed Hygiene
Improving your sleep often requires lifestyle changes that might take some time and effort to incorporate into your daily routine. However, improving your bed hygiene—cleaning up your bed—is something you can do with a minimal investment of time and money, if you’re willing to recognize a few fundamental facts.
1. A Mattress Pad and Pillow Protectors Are Nonnegotiable
Whether we’re working with our hotel clients around the world to create beautiful and hygienic beds for their guests or with our retail customers to design their individual sleep havens, we always begin with the foundational items that will protect their mattresses and pillows. Face it, we all sweat and drool when we sleep. We also shed skin cells that provide a food source for dust mites, spill food and drinks, and share our beds with our beloved pets. Unprotected, your mattress and pillows can become soiled very quickly.
By preventing these contaminants from reaching your mattresses and pillows, you can extend their useful lives and protect your sleep health and well-being. That’s why we strongly recommend the consistent use of a waterproof mattress pad and zippered pillow protectors.
down etc spent years developing and perfecting our lilypads® line of waterproof mattress pads to meet all of our customers’ needs for a noiseless, motionless, and breathable pad for their mattresses. lilypads® mattress pads are designed with a 100% polyester nonwoven backing to provide a waterproof barrier shown to be capable of holding up to three gallons of water; a 100% cotton top layer to provide a soft and silky base on which to place the bottom sheet, and polyester fill to wick moisture away and provide added cushioning. Double diamond quilting holds the layers together and provides the strength to withstand repeated laundering. The full skirt eliminates movement of the pads on the mattress regardless of your movement on the bed.
With regard to your pillows, we have repeated our recommendation for the consistent use of zippered essential cotton pillow protector to protect against sweat and spills and to extend the life of the pillows you love so often that it has become our mantra. Bottom line: removing a pillow protector for regular laundering is much easier than washing your pillows.
2. Sheets Won't Wash Themselves
Sweat, drool, dead skin cells, and cosmetic products, in addition to spilled food and drinks, accumulate on your sheets, creating fertile ground for dust mites and bacteria that can aggravate allergies and make you unwell. Maintaining a clean bed means washing your sheets (and this includes your comforter cover) at least once a week, particularly if you shower in the morning, sleep in the nude, or have kids or pets jumping in bed with you. Wash your down etc sheets on the warm setting and tumble dry low. In between washes, you may want to let your bedding breathe while you get ready for your day so that any moisture from the night before has evaporated before making the bed for the day.
Mattress pads and pillow protectors should be washed if they become soiled or pick up a smell. Otherwise, they should be removed from the mattress and pillows to be laundered at least once a month. down etc’s lily pads® should be washed on the warm water setting and tumbled dry on the low setting. Take the opportunity to vacuum your mattress or spot clean any stains while the mattress pad is being laundered to remove any dust or dust mites.
Pillows and comforters should always be covered when in use since it’s much easier to wash the covers than the pillows and comforters themselves. Pillows and comforters should be laundered if they become soiled or pick up a smell. Even if that is not the case, they should be laundered at least every season to remove any dirt or dust mites that might have reached them. Additionally, periodically placing your down and feather pillows in the dryer with dryer balls on the lowest heat setting for 3-5 minutes will bring them back to maximum fluff.
For more specific instructions, review the care tags on your products. For down etc products, you can read our articles or review our product care instructions on our website.
3. Beds Are for Sleeping (and Sex), and That’s It
There may have been a time in your youth when your bed served as a desk, a dinner table, and a couch, as well as a bed. It probably didn’t keep you from falling and staying asleep when you were ready. However, particularly when sleep becomes more difficult with age, experts recommend limiting the use of the bed to sleep and sex.
One of the tools of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is stimulus control, which focuses on helping your mind and body recognize your bed as a place for sleep in order to help you to fall asleep when you lie down. You go to bed only when you feel sleepy and use the bed only for sleep (and sex). According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, “regular timing of bedtime and waking and not going to bed unless you are sleepy, will serve as a positive reinforcement of the bed being a place for sleep and is essential for maintaining ease of falling and staying asleep.”
Although not “inherently harmful,” sleep trends like “bed rotting,” in which one remains in bed for extended periods, up to a day or more, won’t help someone who has difficulty sleeping when it’s actually bedtime. Also, if you’re not a fan of regular sheet washing, you might want to avoid bed rotting.
4. Outside Clothes and Shoes Have No Business in Your Bed
As tempting as it might be, don’t lie down for a nap in your outside clothes, particularly with your shoes on. When you do that, you bring everything from the outside into your bed.
Unless you’ve been exposed to some obvious environmental hazard, wearing your outside clothes in bed might not pose much of a risk to your overall health, according to a professor of infectious disease quoted in marthastewart.com. However, wearing your outside clothes in bed may cause problems if you suffer from allergies, particularly pollen allergies. Even if you don’t suffer from allergies, what you bring into bed with your outside clothes simply adds to the dirt that will accumulate on your bedding.
You might consider following the lead of luxury hotels by placing a turndown mat next to your bed. That way, you won’t have to step on the bare floor when you’re getting in or out of bed. It will also allow you to wipe your feet immediately before you climb into bed and prevent you from tracking anything in with you.
5. Pets In Your Bed? Well, That’s Up to You
According to a 2022 survey by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, almost half of respondents share their beds with their pets. Many reported they sleep better when their pet sleeps in their beds.
There are a variety of benefits to sharing your bed with your pets, from reducing anxiety and loneliness to potentially heightening immunity through exposure to a diversity of microorganisms, according to sleepfoundation.org. At the same time, pet hair and dander may trigger or worsen allergies and pets may carry harmful parasites. Remember, your dog runs around outside and your cat walks through the litter box before they jump into bed with you.
There are pros and cons to sharing the bed with your pets for you and them, according to AARP. If you’re going share the bed, you should probably give their paws a good wipe beforehand. You should certainly use a waterproof mattress pad and pillow protectors and launder your sheets weekly.
Keep your bed clean and stay healthy.
-Team at down etc
Read more:
Why Do Hotels Use White Sheets?
How to Care for Your Pillows and Bedding
Everything You Need to Know About Caring for Your Pillows
What Is It About Sliding into Fresh, Clean Sheets that Feels So Good?
About down etc
For over twenty years, down etc has worked with hoteliers and professional housekeepers in hotels around the world to manufacture and provide the pillows and the bedding that will offer hotel guests memorably great sleep. Through our retail website, we seek to provide products that will result in the same quality sleep for our customers at home. We believe in the restorative power of a great night’s sleep, whether at home or away. That’s the reason down etc wrote the book on it, Roll Into a Perfectly Made Bed: All You Need to Know About the Art of Bedmaking.
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