Do you often feel tired and groggy in the morning, even on nights when you’ve gotten enough sleep? It’s a frustrating experience, but there may be a simple explanation: you have poor sleep quality.

Figuring out that you’re not getting enough sleep is easy. Figuring out why that sleep isn’t restful is trickier, but certainly achievable. Read on to learn the signs of lack of sleep, what could be causing your poor sleep quality, and how to improve it.

Signs Your Sleep Quality Needs To Improve

If you think you’re getting poor sleep, consider whether you possess any of these tell-tale signs:

• You take more than 30 minutes to fall asleep after you get into bed.
• You regularly wake up more than once per night.
• You lie awake for more than 20 minutes when you wake up in the middle of the night.
• You spend less than 85 percent of your time in bed asleep.
• You feel tired and have difficulty concentrating during the day. You may be drinking more caffeine to stay alert.
• Your skin is breaking out and your eyes are puffy, red, or developing dark circles or bags.
• You feel hungry more often, especially for junk food, and gaining weight.
• You feel more stressed out, emotionally exhausted, and angrier than usual.
• You’ve been diagnosed with insomnia.

 

What Is Sleep Quality?

Sleep quality is different from sleep quantity. Sleep quantity measures how much sleep you get each night, while sleep quality measures how well you sleep.

Measuring sleep quantity is simple, as it’s quick to determine if you’re getting the recommended amount of sleep per night (usually defined as at least seven hours for adults). Measuring sleep quality is a little more of an art than a science. Generally, good sleep quality is defined by the following characteristics:

• You fall asleep soon after getting into bed, within 30 minutes or less.
• You typically sleep straight through the night, waking up no more than once per night.
• You’re able to sleep the recommended amount of hours for your age group.
• You fall back asleep within 20 minutes if you do wake up.
• You feel rested, restored, and energized upon waking up in the morning.

Reasons for Poor Sleep Quality

Any number of things could be contributing to your poor sleep quality. Some potential causes include poor sleep hygiene, stress, sleep apnea, or another chronic health condition or sleep disorder.

Poor Sleep Habits

Poor sleep habits, like having an irregular sleep schedule or consuming too much caffeine or alcohol, can interfere with your sleep quality. In a study of nursing students, smoking and daily coffee consumption were two of the largest factors associated with poor sleep quality. Alcohol also disturbs your sleep, even though it’s considered a sedative.

Stress and Anxiety

Poor mental health, whether from increased stress or a depression or anxiety disorder, also contributes to poor sleep quality. Problematically, sleep deprivation and the resulting insomnia worsen these conditions, creating a vicious cycle.

Chronic Health Conditions

Certain chronic health conditions are associated with poor sleep patterns and less sleep overall. These include chronic lung diseases, asthma, acid reflux, renal disease, cancer, fibromyalgia, and chronic pain. Unfortunately, as with stress and anxiety, poor sleep quality can exacerbate the symptoms and discomfort felt with these conditions.

Sleep Apnea

A person with sleep apnea experiences temporary lapses in breathing during their sleep, resulting in gasping, choking, and snoring sounds. Even if they don’t consciously wake up, their brain has to kick start breathing again, disrupting sleep quality. Sleepiness and lack of energy are two of the most common complaints of individuals with sleep apnea.

Undiagnosed Sleep Disorder

Because they occur in your sleep, some sleep disorders go undiagnosed until a person seeks care for other symptoms like poor sleep quality, or a sleep partner alerts them to the symptoms. For example, individuals with periodic limb movement disorder (PLMD) experience involuntary jerking movements in their legs while they sleep, resulting in reduced sleep quality, and fatigue and poor concentration during the day. Individuals with narcolepsy likewise often suffer from poor sleep quality, and experience daytime fatigue.

How To Improve Your Sleep Quality

Fortunately, improving your sleep quality may be as simple as improving your sleep hygiene. Just like dental hygiene involves regularly brushing and flossing to maintain your teeth, sleep hygiene is all about practicing good habits that help you get good sleep consistently.

Try these ideas to improve your sleep.

1. Stop watching television and using your phone or computer for at least 30 minutes before bedtime. Electronic devices emit bright blue light that your brain perceives as sunlight, tricking it into delaying sleep and keeping you awake longer than you’d like.
2. Transform your bedroom into a dark, quiet, and cool oasis. Set your thermostat to somewhere in the low- to mid-60 degrees Fahrenheit, and use blackout curtains or a white noise machine to further relax your senses.
3. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. Following a consistent sleep schedule trains your brain to recognize when it’s time to sleep and when it’s time to wake.
4. Make sure your sleep schedule allows for enough time to sleep. Adults need at least seven hours of sleep per night.
5. Create a relaxing bedtime routine. Select activities that relax and calm you, like taking a warm bath, listening to an audiobook, or journaling. Performing these activities in the same order every night creates a pattern for your brain to recognize them as the prelude to sleep.
6. Limit your caffeine and alcohol intake. Both of these substances can stay in your system for some time and disrupt your sleep quality. Avoid drinking alcohol within three hours of bedtime, and caffeine within five hours.
7. Get some sunlight in the morning. Just 15-30 minutes outside in the sun can help wake you up and reset your circadian rhythm.

If you still have trouble sleeping after implementing these suggestions, talk to your doctor. They may recommend other lifestyle changes, therapies, or medications that can improve your sleep quality.

The feel and performance of the bedding you choose can have a major impact on your comfort and sleep quality. Important factors to consider when buying new sheets and pillowcases include the fabric, weave, ease of care, and cost. It’s also important that the sheet set’s size and fitted sheet’s pocket depth are compatible with your mattress.

Well-made sateen sheets we’ve tested have a certain “wow” factor — These sheets have an elegant look and soft feel, and a price that won’t break the bank.

How It Performed

Our testers noted the sateen weave makes the sheets especially smooth and soft against the skin, and they have an elegant and lustrous look. Thanks to the silky feel, we recommend the sheet set for sleepers with sensitive skin. Our testers were able to glide across the sheets with no harsh rubbing or irritation. The pocket depth should fit most standard mattresses, but it may not fit if you own a high-profile pillow-top or a thick mattress topper.

What It’s Made of

The source material for the Luxury Sateen sheets is 100% long-staple cotton known for its natural durability. Its extended fibers are put to use with a sateen weave and a mid-range thread count of 480.

The fitted sheet can comfortably fit on mattresses up to 15 inches tall. Caring for the sheets is easy, as you can machine wash them with cold water and dry them on a low-heat, tumble-dry setting.

The high-quality cotton increases the durability of these sheets.

Who is the best for?

• People who want the silky smoothness of a sateen weave
• Customers who prioritize cotton with a high thread count
• Shoppers looking for distinct color and pattern options

All brushed cloth are cotton?  No! Not only cotton, but also polyester can be brushed cloth.

I saw a lot of comments: after buying it, consumers realized that it was not pure cotton. People misunderstand the brushed as material, thinking that as long as it is brushed, it must be pure cotton. Please note that brushed is just a craft!

What are the good features of brushed polyester?

Fiber strength of polyester is good, so polyester cloth can not shed hair; The polyester has poor water absorption, so it is not easy to fade and shrink; That’s why some customers in brick-and-mortar stores who buy brushed polyester, say others’ cloth is faded, shrunk, and lost color, but the cloth they bought for dozens of yuan is not like this.

It seems that brushed polyester has many advantages, but when you use it in winter, you will find that the polyester cover is very hot, because the air permeability of polyester is very poor. When you are hot, you want to kick the quilt, immediately catch cold;

Moisture absorption performance of polyester is also poor, once you get hot and sweaty, you will feel the water beads rolling on the fabric.

How about the brushed cotton?

Cotton is a natural fiber which is hypoallergenic, breathable, absorbs moisture and soft.

As intimate bedding, comfort and health and safety are the first priority, and everything else is just icing on the cake.

In the dry winter season, the static electricity released by polyester friction is harmful to the human body, and it is also an allergen material.

Of course, polyester is not bad, only not suitable for close-fitting use, if you do shell, quilt cover A version of the fabric is no problem.

But close-fitting parts remember to use pure cotton or natural material is better, after all, whether skin-friendly properties, or air permeability, pure cotton is the best.

How to distinguish brushed pure cotton quickly?

Choice of bedding first is to see the material! How to quickly judge whether the brushed four-piece set is pure cotton? The first is the weight, a set of brushed four pieces is twice as much as the ordinary cotton, and the brushed polyester is lighter. Secondly, the feel of brushed polyester is smoother and sticky to the touch feeling.

Some friends around me asked me whether they win the lottery or something, some merchants said that $100 could buy 3kg of down comforters.

The price of down raw materials has been high, 95% standard goose down has reached nearly $100/kg at present. $100 could buy 3kg of down duvet? Are you kiding me???

( Down cluster picture)

 

Down alternative/ Down Fiber/ Feather Fiber are down?

 

There are some materials called down alternative on the market. You think it is related to down, wrong!  Down alternative even have nothing to do with down, down alternative materials are polyester. Don’t let the name fool you, meanwhile the warmth of these materials is far from down raw materials.

(Down alternative picture)

The essential distinction between Feather/down fiber and down cluster is, down is composed by ball fiber, while feather/down fiber is the linear form. So after using for a period of time, the fluffiness will decrease and the warmth will be greatly reduced.

(Down/feather fiber picture)

 

Use crushed down/feather fiber as down

Fancy everyone’s sensitivity to the price of the duvet is high, bad businesses in order to seek profiteering, will break duck or goose feather as down; You may not know that duvets made of crushed feather fiber, which are easy to drill and carry a lot of bacteria, are banned by the state.

This kind of duvet, clap the quilt before buying, if you feel the fill power of quilt is not high, the resilience is not good, but the weight is heavy, you should be careful, it may be crushed feather!

Check the fluffiness of duvet is good or not when you buys duvet! The duvet should be relaxed and smooth first, placed naturally for three minutes, and then pressed by hand to see whether the quilt can bounce back quickly to its original state. If there is no bounce back, then you should doubt the quality of this duvet.

 

It’s fall, and it’s time to check if your duvet is stored correctly. Check your duvet for any yellowing, odor, or fluff problems.

How to avoid these problems?

Step 1: Air dry in advance

(Avoid breeding mites, yellowing and peculiar smell)

Before storing down duvets, it is recommended to clean them once conditionally, such as seven stars washing or I*wash, which is a professional washing care for home textiles.

Dry cleaning is absolutely not OK, because dry cleaning will damage down and affect the filling power. Be sure to dry it properly, to make sure the moisture is removed.

The removal of water from the down duvet can better prevent the breeding of mites and bacteria, avoid yellowing caused by moisture after the down duvet is collected, and produce a fishy smell.

Pls note that the duvet can’t be in the air for a long time, it will absorb moisture instead.

Step 2: Use a cloth bag

(Avoid damaging down and affecting down power)

 

The down of the duvet is spherical structure, the fiber will not withstand long vacuum compression. Many customers in order to save space, choose vacuum compression bag, the damage to down is great. Generally speaking, the proportion of down compression can not be higher than 70%.

When storing the duvet, do you use plastic bags or cloth bags? There are certain rules about this. It’s better use cloth bag to pack duvet. Because plastic bags are not breathable and impermeable to moisture, the compression is also large when packing. So it smells when we leave it a long time.

If a cloth bag is used to pack the down comforter, it can play the role of protecting the quilt, and it can be breathable and permeable. Storage bag can put a bag of activated carbon or desiccant, can play moisture absorption, and can go to the effect of odor, but pay attention not to put mothballs, to avoid the quilt yellowing.

Step 3: Avoid light and stress

(To avoid yellowing and affecting the down power)

After duvet is stored, to be put in dry and avoid to put in the place with strong light directly. Prolonged exposure to light will affect the yellowing of the cover.

In addition, when storing down duvet, do not put in the bottom layer, try to choose to let down duvet on the top, so that it will not affect the down power of duvet.