You will spend one-third of your life in your bedroom sleeping. Think about it. One third of your total life spent in one room.

You will rest, relax, and regenerate here.

You will sleep, dream, cuddle, and have sexy time in this very room.

Yet, somehow, we rarely ask ourselves whether we can improve the quality of time spent in this precious space.

We just jump in, pull up the blanket and expect to fall asleep and be fit and functional once we open our eyes again. It’s a miracle, really.

Not keeping in mind our biological needs when it comes to sleep.

I think it is time, however, to give our bedroom the status it deserves.

Let us turn it into a shrine dedicated to the wondrous reset button we all experience on a daily basis.

Follow these simple tweaks to turn our bedroom into an oasis of well-being.

1. Expel The Light

In today’s neon-lit world, it is hard to get enough darkness. We evolved to spend much more time without a source of light, either sleeping or just resting, than we do in our modern age. When you are exposed to light, your body inhibits the sleep hormone and powerful anti-oxidant: Melatonin.

Especially being exposed to high levels of blue light off-sets your whole neurotransmitter and hormone equilibrium. Studies have linked this to chronic stress, Bipolar Disorder and all kinds of immune-system imbalances.

Closing your eyes doesn’t help.

Even your skin can detect a small beam of artificial light!

Check out this graph:

Lux is shown in a logarithmic scale which means that the difference between direct sunlight, starlight and the reflection on a full moon are immense. By sitting indoors the whole day you miss out on the intensity of direct sunlight, which is a cause of many health problem in itself (lack of vitamin D for instance).

More important, using all kinds of electronics at night greatly disturbs your circadian rhythm.

One way to counter this and make sure to get enough quality darkness is making sure your bedroom is completely dark. And with completely, I mean total pitch black.

Shun the buzzing orange street lights!

Here is a picture of my bedroom at night after I installed my blackout curtains:

I have never slept better in my life. Now, you might worry you have to acquire a complete new set of expensive curtains and spend hours to build your own fortress of darkness. Thank god there is an easy solution that lets you keep your existing window covers!

2. Bring In The Plants

Did you ever wake up from a muff and stifling room (What the hell does “muff” mean?) only to find out that opening the window and a stream of fresh air is gift sent from heaven?

We all know quality, non-polluted air is of vital importance to our health. Just check out this 4-minute TED talk:

To optimize your house you need the following:

4x shoulder height of “The Living Room Plant” Areca Palm (Dypsis lutescens) per person .

shoulder height of “The Living Room Plant” (Dypsis lutescens) . 6-8x waist height of “The Bedroom Plant” Mother-in-law’s Tongue (Sansevieria trifasciata) per person .

waist height of “The Bedroom Plant” (Sansevieria trifasciata) . 6x medium-sized of “The Specialist Plant” Money Plant (Epipremnum aureum) per person.

Make sure to put the Mother-in-law’s Tongue in your bedroom since it actually releases oxygen at night.

You can find alternatives for these plants in this list here.

3. Clean Up The Electronics

You want to use your bedroom only for sleep and relaxing entertainment (journaling, reading, meditation and sex). Electronics like laptops and televisions spread too much blue light and will keep you awake. So it is a good idea to not use these at least two hours before you go to bed. (if you necessarily have to work while it is already dark outside then make at least sure you have f.lux installed – download here – it’s free!)

You also want to associate your bedroom with calmness and relaxation. Thus it is of vital importance to do away with everything that you associate with stress, like a tablet or phone. You don’t want yourself be reminded about things you have to do or upcoming events you can worry about. The moment you step into your bedroom you should allow yourself to feel safe and secure. So make sure your bedroom is only for rest – nothing else.

Scientists found that the biggest correlate with depression is lack of quality sleep. If you want to take this to the next level and really feel what an amazing change improved sleep habits can make, take the stimulation fast + sunrise sensei challenge together by enrolling in our acclaimed spiritual obstacle course.

4. Silence Is Golden

Screaming neighbours, honking cars, barking bastards. We’ve all been there, wanting to kill something that woke us up. This instinct has preserved our species over millions of years. Yet in our modern world it is often just a cause of irritation – and a lack of sleep. We often don’t have time to extend our sleep for another hour if we were woken up at night.

A very easy fix is to get good quality earplugs – ones that you don’t feel you are wearing.

(another way to reduce the impact of sound is to actually add noise. Sleeping with white noise, cricket or bird sounds in the background reduces the contrast hard noises from outside, thus improving your sleep.)

5. Bring Back The Light

Most people I know use a normal alarm clock to wake them up in the morning. When the curtains are still closed and they are still residing in deep sleep when it goes off, it causes an immediate stress response as their first experience of the day.

But we are not night creatures.

The night frightens us; we can’t see, we’re tired and just want to cuddle with others in our safe space. When we get abruptly awakened in the dark, our body senses something must be up.

In contrast, we naturally wake up with the rising sun. The red color of the morning sun slowly brings us out of deeper sleep cycles and gently wakes us up.

I have always felt out of sync for hours after being awakened by an alarm clock. I never wanted to get out of bed whilst still dark, I just wanted to close my eyes and go back to sleep. Often a disappointing start of the day.

I am so happy this is over. I found a gadget called the Wake Up Light and it is the best thing I’ve bought in long time. It simulates a colored sunrise – going from red to white light in 20-40 minutes. After this it starts the radio or a soundtrack with birds or other relaxing music.

Often I wake up without my standard brain fog before that however, and I enjoy the couple of minutes I can still lie in bed. It is such an improvement over my old routine – of being cranky and needing coffee. Now I am immediately awake and ready to start my day.

To recapitulate:

Bonus:

Update 12/8/2017: Upgrade your mattress. I recently bought one. A sturdy high quality one. This is the first time in my life I actually invested in a mattress because I realized I was using mine daily, but it didn’t give me any support. I wish I had done it sooner. It feels so damn good.

What do you do to get a night full of sleep?