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The Best Types of Bed Sheets for Your Sleep This Summer

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white summer bed sheets being spread and styled on bed

Just like you have over 80 options to buy a new mattress from City Mattress, we carry many types of bedding as well. While some are ideal for specific preferences and likes, others are made to meet certain needs. This time of year, what you need is a nice, cool bedding that doesn’t make you too hot while you sleep!

Summertime means a lot of great things, but it also means the temperature is rising outside your bedroom window. When it’s this hot outside, it’s tough to keep cool even inside! This is more than just uncomfortable; it has a negative impact on your quality of sleep as well. In research, heat exposure increases wakefulness and decreases slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep. Humid heat exposure further increases thermal load during sleep and negatively affects your ability to cycle through the sleep stages and thermoregulation. 

If your room is too hot, you’ll likely have trouble getting to sleep. Recent research found that the optimal room temperature for sleep is about 66 to 70 degrees. Even if your air conditioner is able to keep your room at the perfect temperature for you, it’s still possible to feel too warm during the night. Your bedding can all make you feel overheated. That is why it is so important to find the right types of bed sheets for the summer months.

You see, your bedding acts as an insulator much like the insulation in your home. Thicker bedding tends to trap more heat than thinner sheets, which can lead to overheating. Different fabrics have different heat-retaining properties and may influence your sleep quality. A small 2016 study compared the effects of cotton, polyester, and wool bedding on sleep quality at temperatures of 63 and 72 degrees. These researchers found wool promoted sleep onset more than cotton, but cotton promoted deeper sleep. You can interpret these findings to mean wool makes you fall asleep faster, cotton allows you to sleep more deeply, and both are better for staying cool at night than polyester. Wool and cotton aren’t your only two options, though. There is also bamboo!

Find the Best Types of Bed Sheets for Summer

Your sheets are extremely important to creating the ideal sleep environment, but to assure you choose the types of bed sheets that are best for your sleep this summer, it’s essential to first know a bit more about the options you have available to you:

Cotton

 The most obvious answer is cotton, but not all cotton is created equal. In order to find top-quality cotton sheets, you’ll want to understand a few things. Staple length refers to the length of the fibers used to weave the cotton into a sheet. The longer the staple, the higher the quality of the cotton and the softer, more durable those sheets will be. This is why SFERRA luxury linens feature only 100% extra long-staple cotton. You’re also going to want to look for either Egyptian cotton or Pima cotton. Both of these options are high quality and soft. Pima is known for durability and strength. They both will feel comfortable, plus keep you cool all night long. You may also want to consider organic options that are free from harsh chemicals and dyes.

Remember, higher quality sheets last longer! If you want to go several years before you need to go linens shopping again, the key is purchase as high-quality cotton bedding as you can afford and then care for them correctly.

Wool

One look at a sheep and you’re thinking, “There’s no way that is going to keep me cool!” This is a common misunderstanding of wool. In fact, high-quality wool bedding absorbs moisture from the atmosphere of greater humidity to create a drier environment as a way of maintaining balance. This means in the winter wool helps to hold in your body heat, while in the summer wool helps your body cool off. If you are hot, the wool bedding wicks the moisture away from your body keeping you cool. Tiny pores in the cuticle cells allow water vapor to pass through the wool fiber. This makes wool comfortable in both warm and cool conditions.

Bamboo

There’s a lot to love about bamboo bedding! These sheets are softer than polyester or linen and are known to be wrinkle-resistant. Aside from this, bamboo sheets are durable, hypoallergenic, and breathable. That’s right- they’ll do wonders for keeping you cool! Bamboo sheets are naturally breathable and wick away moisture.

There’s nothing quite like slipping into a bed outfitted with the perfect bed sheets. Whether you’re looking for organic cotton sheets, bamboo sheets, or any other types of bedding, you can find it with City Mattress! We encourage you to shop for new bedding now, so you don’t lose sleep this summer getting too hot at night.