Is your Bed linen disturbing your night sleep? Check the facts here!

Sustainable Bed Linen for quality sleep:

One of the most common issues we face today is sleep disorder. According to the latest survey 62% of people around the world have problems sleeping, with as many as 67% reporting sleep disturbances at least once every night.

Over 7.5 million people in the UK sleep for less than five hours a night on average, which is seen as a dangerously low level and a threat to mental and physical health by medical professionals. The situation is much worser among the children.

The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that sleep problems affect 25 to 50 percent of children and 40 percent of adolescents.

According to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Health Behavior in School-aged Children report one in four children in the UK don’t get enough sleep. The problem is more severe among the children under ASD.

Depression, anxiety, trauma, life changes, hormonal fluctuations, poor sleep habits and an “overly active mind” can all contribute to insomnia. 

It’s evident that a sustainable lifestyle can immensely help to battle sleep disorders. But even if you are not able to adopt sustainable practices in your daily life you must pay attention to your bed linen and need to choose a sustainable product. The color, quality and composition of the bed linen have immense influence on our quality and pattern of sleep.

Being a common man it’s not an easy task to understand and pick up the correct bed linen particularly when several promotional events and advertisement keep us confused.

Here, I have tried to explain a few points to be considered while choosing the right product from a wide range of bed linens available today in the market.

1. Color of the Bed linen
2. Composition of blend (please refer the label stitched inside to get this information)
3. Thread Count commonly referred as TC (please refer the label stitched inside to get this information)

Color of the Bed Linen:

The color of our bed sheet has a lot of impact on our neurotransmitters and thus affects our mood and quality of sleep. While a few colors can trigger anxiety, depression, stress, the other can help us to calm down our nervous system, can make us relaxed, can increase our serotonin and melatonin level and thus help us to have quality sleep.

Lavender:

Lavender is the most desirable color for the bed linen for 2023 because of its relaxing and soothing tone. It only helps you to get a good night’s sleep, but it also helps to start your day in a more creative way. We suggest you to be careful while selecting lavender as purple bed sheet has the opposite effect on your sleep.

Blue:

Blue is serene and calming. It stimulates the body’s production of serotonin and dopamine. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that affects mood, sleep and temperature regulation and thus helps to get a longer period of quality sleep.

Green:

Green is very relaxing and calming for your mind and body due to its close association with nature. As it creates a sense of harmony and balance it takes away your worries at bedtime providing a proper undisturbed sleep.

Grey:

While white can negatively impact your sleep, grey can help you to get a quality sleep because of its non-aggressive nature and calming effect.

Pink:

The pink color bed sheet has a tranquilizing effect and can calm hostile or angry emotions brewing within. It can also calm the muscles and help relax the senses, removing negative emotions from the body and offering you a good night’s sleep.

While the above colors help to get a good sleep, try to avoid the below colors if you want to have a quality sleep.

1. Ivory white or any other shade of bright white
2. Red
3. Black
4. Purple
5. Brown

The above colors stimulate our nervous system and try to keep us more energized and active and thus not an obvious choice for a perfect bed linen for your bedroom.

Composition or Blend of the fabric:

Doctors often recommend that your body should be cool, comfortable and able to breathe if you want the deepest and healthiest sleep. So, you need to consider the below factors while choosing the right blend for you.

• Temperature Regulation
• Softness & Comfort
• Hypoallergenic
• Anti-Bacterial

We recommend cotton, linen, bamboo and Tencel mostly as a perfect fibers to select to have a quality sleep.

Cotton Bed Sheets:

Cotton bed sheets are available in a wider range of variety in terms of quality and price and could be a suitable choice for a vast range of consumers.

Cotton is a pure, natural material, and this means that when woven into a bedding set it makes the fabric breathable. Every night your body temperature changes as you fall asleep. This often results in waking up hot, sticky, and desperate for some cool air.

Cotton can amazingly absorb the heat from your body throughout the night, allowing you to stay cool and dry (studies show we can sweat a pint of perspiration each night). As well as keeping you cool in the summer, cotton bedding will keep you warm throughout winter by absorbing and retaining your body heat.

Cotton is naturally hypoallergenic, so has limited association with any allergies, and won’t cause any irritation or itchiness, improving your quality of sleep.

 Cotton bedding has a low maintenance cost, as a natural cotton bedding set can last almost twice as long as any man-made alternative, so you won’t need to replace it as frequently.

If you are looking for extra luxurious cotton bedding, then sateen bed linen is for you. “Sateen” is a type of cotton weave structure that has a soft silky feel. Compared to cotton sheets made from plain or standard weave, sateen sheets are like heaven on your skin – pure luxury! And if your budget permits, we recommend you to look for bed sheets made of Egyptian Cotton or Supima cotton to avail more comfort and luxury.

While a pure 100% cotton bed linen can offer a lot of benefits to have a good night’s sleep a Polycotton sheet (cotton blended with polyester) is not at all recommendable. So be vigilant and ensure to check the composition on the label while buying your cotton bed linen.

2. Linen Bed sheets:

Linen sheets feel heavier than cotton sheets and are about 30 percent stronger yet offer better breathability. For those who tend to get a little warm when sleeping, linen sheets are a perfect luxury bedding choice.

• Linen fabric has unique filtering, bacteria resistant, ventilating, moisture absorbing and evaporating capabilities. Which means linen bedsheets are the perfect companion for a good night’s sleep. Linen is anti-allergenic, making it suitable for people with skin diseases or sensitivities, and for children and babies.
• As linen fabric has microscopic breaks throughout its structure it has a subtle massaging effect on the skin.
• Renowned for its breathability, linen fabric is highly air permeable and heat conducting. As if by magic, this means it keeps you warm in the winter and cool in hot weather, which helps you sleep comfortably and deeply.
• Linen can absorb up to 20% of its weight in moisture before feeling wet. This ability to wick moisture away from the body keeps your skin feeling fresh and cool.
  
• Linen sheets have a distinct, luxurious texture and delightful softness, making them feel delicious to relax back into after a long day. And what’s more, they get even softer and more supple with each wash, getting better with age.
• By helping the skin retain its natural pH balance, linen can help soften and look after your skin as you sleep. It is also anti-static, which increases your skin comfort.
• A linen sheet repels dirt, making this fabric perfect for high wear areas like the bed.
• Linen bedding is twice as durable as cotton bedding and can last for decades. This makes the cost-per-use amazingly low and ensures that buying linen bedlinen is a great investment.
• Because all the different parts of a flax part are used, linen is a very environmentally friendly fabric. The best fibers are used to produce linen, and the seeds are pressed to make linseed oil for floor coverings, such as linoleum, and paint. Not only does this reduce waste, flax also requires no irrigation, is biodegradable and is a renewable resource.

So, you have a great purpose of buying linen bedding to contribute towards nature while enjoying a good sleep.

Bamboo sheets:

Bamboo is dominating the market because of its unique properties and sustainability aspect.

• It has Temperature-Regulating property. Bamboo fibers are naturally breathable and moisture-wicking, which helps to keep your skin cool and dry.
• It is Ultra-Soft & Comfortable.
• It is naturally Hypoallergenic and a great relief for people having sensitive skin or prone to allergy.
• It is Eco-Friendly & Sustainable.
• Durable & Long Lasting.
• Odor-Repellant.

Out of the above the most important advantage of bamboo is its temperature regulating properties.

Cotton is certainly a very absorbent material, but it isn’t the best cooling bedding. Here’s how it works in practice:

Cotton is able to absorb 27 times its weight in water. Still, its fibers do not allow this water to evaporate easily, so it remains trapped in the material. Not only does this mean that once cotton has reached its maximum absorption capacity, it loses its ability to regulate temperature, but it also means that your body heat will no longer be able to escape because of all this trapped moisture.

The most important thing you need to know about bamboo linen is that it is naturally 3°C cooler than cotton because of its thread count and structure.

Intrinsically linked to our last point is its evaporation capacity. Unlike cotton, when bamboo absorbs moisture, it can pass through the material and evaporate. This is what makes bamboo an excellent material for cool bedding.

Now, let’s understand why we need cool bedding. Every night, in order to fall asleep, our body produces melatonin, commonly known as sleep hormone. Several factors can encourage the production of this hormone, but the two main ones are darkness and temperature. This is why, as bedtime approaches, our body lowers its temperature to produce more melatonin. By sleeping in cool bedding, we make our body’s hard work easier, allowing it to produce melatonin more quickly and thus fall asleep in no time.

Bamboo, being extremely soft and lustrous, is often being used as an alternative to silk bedding also.

Tencel & Excel Bedding:

One of the most common eco-friendly choices is Tencel or Excel, while Tencel is produced by the Austrian company Lenzing, Excel is produced by Aditya Birla Group of India. They both come under lyocell.

They top cotton when it comes to breathability. Sheets made from Tencel are incredibly absorbent and breathable. For hot sleepers, this means Tencel can wick away sweat as you sleep and help to regulate your body temperature throughout the night.

Beyond its superior temperature-regulating capabilities, TENCEL is the vegan silk–as soft and silky as luxurious silk without animal harm, tedious washing instructions, or the sky-high price tag.

Both fibers are produced in a closed-loop solvent system means almost no solvent is dumped into the ecosystem. Instead, it is recycled time and time again to produce new fibers and minimize harmful waste.

Second, Tencel is made from sustainably sourced wood, while around 30% of rayon and viscose used in fashion is made from pulp sourced from endangered and ancient forests. Lenzing AG states its sources from sustainably managed PEFC or  FSC tree plantations. Lenzing AG says the solvent recovery rate for their version is an impressive 99%.

 In 2017, the Rainforest Alliance assessed Birla as at low risk of sourcing products from ancient or endangered forests or other controversial sources. Birla also claims to recover over 90% of chemicals used in Excel production. This is an industry-leading result, so clothing made from Birla-sourced lyocell is another good option.

Thread Count:

The third most important factor while choosing the perfect bed linen is its thread count. Thread count is simply a way of measuring the number of vertical and horizontal threads per square inch of your bed linen. The higher the thread counts, the more threads there are within the fabric.

Although it is often believed that the higher thread count makes better quality, it’s not always true. Rather sometimes very high thread count makes the bed linen uncomfortable.

Sheets with a higher thread count are generally more expensive and are marketed as being higher quality.

It is true that a sheet set with a thread count of 400 will usually feel better than a comparable set with a thread count of 200. However, that’s assuming that the quality of yarns used, the craftsmanship, and the weave are all the same for both sheet sets.

Looking for sheets with a reasonable thread count (200-600 for most styles) will typically produce the best results. Be sure to modify your expectations somewhat depending on the material used.

Excessively high thread counts (600-800) likely won’t change much beyond the price tag. Very high thread counts are typically very similar in terms of feel and performance to high-quality fabrics with lower counts. Trying to pack too many threads into a fabric can sometimes stifle airflow, resulting in a heavier, warmer feel.

Shoppers should be wary of extremely high thread counts, such as 900 or more. Often, this is an indication of low-quality sheets, as the manufacturer is likely using some sort of trick to disguise the true quality of the product.

One common tactic to artificially inflate the thread count is to use double- or triple-ply threads, which are usually of a lower quality. As each thread technically has two or three fibers, they are counted two or three times when it comes to the thread count. This could result in a sheet set with a thread count of 900 that’s of a lower quality than a similar set with a thread count of just 300.

There are some other obvious factors to consider from a technical point of view, but from a layman’s perspective, you can refer to the above guidelines while choosing a perfect bed linen to have quality sleep and fight insomnia.