How Does Sleep Work?
Firstly, it's worth taking a moment to understand that two systems play an important role in regulating sleep: your circadian rhythm and your sleep drive:
Circadian Rhythm
Your circadian rhythm, or body clock, helps regulate the roughly 24-hour cycle between being awake and asleep. Light plays an important part in this process, helping the body distinguish between daytime activity and night-time rest.
Sleep Drive
Your sleep drive is rather simpler. Broadly speaking, the longer you’re awake, the greater your need for sleep becomes. Sleep reduces that pressure, ready for the process to begin again the following day.
A good sleep routine, therefore, works with these natural systems rather than against them. So, let's deep dive into how we can all get a better night's sleep.
Our 11 Top Tips For A Good Nights Sleep
1. Keep Regular Sleeping Hours
Going to bed and getting up at roughly the same time each day helps reinforce your body clock.
That doesn’t mean bedtime needs to become a military operation. Consistency matters more than absolute precision. A regular rhythm gives your body useful cues about when it should be awake and when it should begin winding down.
2. Get Some Daylight
Your bedroom should be dark at night. During the day, the opposite applies.
Daylight helps regulate your circadian rhythm and tells your body that it’s time to be alert. Dr Schiller recommends getting outside during the day and, where possible, making morning daylight part of your routine.
A morning walk has quite a lot going for it.
3. Be Active During The Day
Physical activity increases the body’s need for recovery and can help build sleep drive.
Timing matters, though. Very intensive exercise shortly before bed can leave the body feeling more alert rather than less, so give yourself time to come down afterwards.
4. Think Carefully About Napping
There are days when a nap feels less like an indulgence and more like basic maintenance.
But sleeping during the day reduces your sleep drive. A long or late nap can therefore make it harder to fall asleep when bedtime arrives.
If you regularly struggle to sleep at night, it may be worth looking at what happens during the afternoon too.
5. Give Yourself Time To Wind Down Before Bed
Sleep rarely responds well to being rushed.
A simple, recurring evening routine can signal that the active part of the day is over. Read. Have a bath. Dim the lights. Put tomorrow’s things in order. Whatever works for you, the point is less about the particular ritual and more about repetition.
Your brain gradually learns what comes next.
6. Put Screens Away
Phones, tablets, laptops and televisions provide light at precisely the point we want our surroundings to become darker. They also have an unfortunate habit of keeping the brain occupied.
Putting screens aside before bed gives both your eyes and your mind a chance to adjust to a quieter pace.
The emails will still be there tomorrow. Remarkably reliable things, emails.
7. Don't Take Your Worries To Bed
Anyone who has remembered something deeply important at 11.47pm knows that a quiet bedroom can occasionally give the mind rather too much space.
If thoughts keep circling, Dr Schiller suggests writing them down and setting aside another time to deal with them. It’s a simple way of putting some distance between a thought and the need to solve it immediately.
And if you find yourself lying awake for a long time, get out of bed for a while and do something calm before returning when you feel sleepy.
The idea is to keep the association between bed and rest intact.
8. Keep Your Bedroom Cool, Dark and Comfortable
Your surroundings matter too.
A dark bedroom supports the body's natural night-time rhythm, while a cooler room works with the natural drop in body temperature that happens overnight.
Then there is the bed itself.
Comfort is personal, but temperature, breathability and what sits against your skin can all make a noticeable difference. Which brings us, naturally enough, to bedding.
9. Choose The Right Bedding For A Good Night's Sleep
We spend a considerable amount of time in bed, so the materials surrounding us deserve some thought.
For cotton bedding, the fibre quality matters as much as the number attached to its thread count. Our cotton bedding is made from extra-long staple cotton because it can be spun into finer, stronger yarns with fewer exposed fibre ends, helping create fabric that feels smoother against the skin while remaining durable. Then comes the weave...
Percale or Sateen: Which is Better?
Neither is inherently better. They simply feel different.
- Cotton Percale has a crisp, matte character and a light, airy feel. Our Crisp & Cool bedding uses a 400 thread count percale weave, making it particularly suited to people who prefer that fresh, hotel-sheet feeling or tend to sleep warm.
- Sateen exposes more of the yarn at the surface, creating a smoother, silkier hand feel. Our Soft & Smooth bedding uses a 600 thread count sateen weave for a softer, more enveloping bed.
Choosing between them is less about which specification sounds more impressive and more about how you like to sleep: crisp and cool or smooth and cosseting. For more guidance, head over to our Percale vs Sateen Comaprison article.
Does Thread Count Matter?
Yes, thread cound is important but not as much as bedding marketing often suggests.
A high thread count cannot compensate for poor-quality cotton. Fibre length, yarn quality, weave and finishing all affect how bedding feels and how well it lasts.
This is why we choose the thread count to suit the weave rather than chasing the largest possible number. For our cotton bedding, that means 400 thread count for Crisp & Cool percale and 600 for Soft & Smooth sateen.
Good bedding is the sum of its parts.
Consider Linen Bedding if Your Hot Sleeper
If you regularly wake up too warm, linen is worth considering.
Linen’s naturally breathable fibres allow air to circulate rather than trapping heat around the body. It’s also good at absorbing and releasing moisture, which helps keep things feeling dry and comfortable on warmer nights.
Our linen bedding collection is made from 100% European Flax™ linen and garment-washed for softness from the start. Lightly textured rather than crisp, it becomes increasingly supple with washing while retaining the durability linen is known for.
It isn’t only for summer, either. Linen’s ability to regulate temperature makes it useful through the seasons — particularly if you tend to sleep warmer than whoever happens to be on the other side of the bed.
For a closer look at linen, cotton and other materials through the seasons, read our guide to finding the right bedding for each season.
10. Avoid caffeine, alcohol and nicotine before bed
What you consume can make a difference to how easily you sleep.
Caffeine and nicotine are stimulants, so consuming them later in the day may make it harder to wind down. Alcohol can initially make you feel sleepy, but it can disrupt sleep later in the night.
Dr Schiller also recommends avoiding very heavy meals shortly before bed. Equally, going to bed hungry isn't especially conducive to drifting off.
As with much in life, somewhere in the middle tends to work rather well.
11. Consider How Your Bed Linen is Made
We think quality should include more than how something feels when you take it out of the packet.
Our manufacturing partner uses wind power and recycles and reuses 99% of its water. The dyes and chemicals used in production are certified to recognised textile standards including OEKO-TEX and GOTS.
These details don't make grand promises about solving the world's problems. They simply reflect our belief that if something can be made thoughtfully, it should be.
In Summary
A good night starts long before your head reaches the pillow.
Regular sleeping hours, daylight, movement, a little distance from your screens and enough time to wind down all help create the right conditions. So does a bedroom that is dark, cool, quiet and comfortable.
And while good bedding can't make you sleep, carefully chosen natural materials can make being in bed considerably nicer.
Perhaps that's the useful way to think about sleep. There isn't one great secret. It's a collection of small, sensible decisions made throughout the day — followed, ideally, by several hours in which you don't have to make any decisions at all.
