World Sleep Day: How tech is making bedding more comfortable to ensure a good night's rest

Wool duvets and foam mattresses key to a relaxing nap

(Getty)

Today is World Sleep Day. Oh, great, you might say, if you’d known that at 8am you’d have known you had a good excuse to stay in bed. Next year, perhaps.

The point of the day is to raise awareness about the importance of sleep and how lack of it can affect everything from education to our social lives. If you’re feeling weary right now, you will already know all this.

So, here’s a guide to some of the best ways technology has been used to create some of the best, most comfortable bedding, for a start.

Woolroom, a company which makes bedding products using British wool, says that research shows that wool bedding can help with deep sleep, so you wake revitalised.

The company makes duvets, pillows, mattresses and more. There’s no denying the comfort of the products – the pillow has just the right amount of bounce and the mattress protector is luxurious without being squashy – but why it feels so good to sleep on is interesting.

Chris Tattersall, managing director of Woolroom, told me: “Clean sleeping has been something that we at Woolroom have been talking about for years: how well you sleep has a direct impact on how you feel. Wool is really clever at keeping your body temperature just right, which helps to prevent a restless night’s sleep. Wool’s unique temperature- and moisture-management properties regulate a controlled climate around the body and the moisture content of the skin.”

The science behind this is simple but reassuring. “During the night, wool fibres absorb your perspiration, and whilst the bed is empty during the day, moisture from the bedding is naturally released or desorbed back into the atmosphere, so by the time you return to bed in the evening, your duvet will have returned to its original dry state, which also has the additional benefit of creating a dust mite free zone naturally.”

If you fancy something more high-tech, recent innovations from companies like Casper come in the form of memory foam mixes in their mattresses. The mattress arrives rolled up and compacted, and it expands over the hours after you lay it out flat. It’s worth noting that there’s a strong chemical smell which comes floating off as it expands, though this usually passes within hours.

Then there’s Simba, which mixes materials including synthetic latex, high-resilience foam, memory foam and pocket springs for support and comfort. It makes its mattresses in Poland and the UK.

Like Woolroom products, Simba and Casper promise temperature control in their products which contributes to the quality of your sleep. Both companies offer a 100-night trial for you to make sure you like the result (though quite what you do with your old mattress while you make your mind up is another matter).

Simba also has an excellent pillow with a centre filled with nanotubes. These sound scary but in fact are just little tubes the size and shape of penne, but made of foam. If the pillow is too big, take handfuls of them out until it’s just right. The company thoughtfully includes a drawstring bag to keep the excess safe in case you need them again. The externals of the pillow include a temperature-regulating material called Outlast and a luxurious layer of duck down.

Outlast is what’s called a phase change material, so it responds to outside temperatures. Too warm? It’ll cool you down. Too cold? Then it’ll heat you up.

I can’t vouch for the science, but I tested the duvet for three weeks of British cold snap and I was never too hot or too cold. For Outlast to work, you need to have the blue-piping side of the duvet next to you. Turn it the other way up and the duck-down and feather, cotton-covered, side is nearer to you and this is soft and luxurious.

All three companies make fitted sheets and mattress protectors. Casper has an extremely well-made duvet cover, though Woolroom’s duvet cover edges it for exceptional comfort. Oh, and Casper has a Dog Bed, which also comes with a 100-night trial. Maybe it’s World Sleep Day for dogs, too.

Simba has its own, slightly unusual, extras including a Sleep Spray and slippers with raised zones on the sole to stimulate the foot’s pressure points.

Incidentally, in celebration of today, Simba has a series of special offers of up to 30 per cent if you buy a bundle of the company’s products. The offer runs today and until Sunday 18 March.

There’s more to the world of sleep tech, including fitness trackers that monitor your sleep. The Fitbit Alta HR is lightweight enough to be barely noticeable while you sleep and can wake you with a silent alarm. This is good, but the best tracker for sleep remains the Jawbone Up. The Up 2 is still available (a steal at £39.99 from Selfridges) and has a smart alarm which monitors your sleep and wakes you at the optimal moment in your sleep cycle. When it gets this just right, you awake refreshed and ready to go.

Note that Apple recently bought a sleep tracking company, Beddit, so chances are that the next Apple Watch, and perhaps current models with the right software update, will have sleep monitoring built in – though the Watch is heavier on the wrist than the Fitbit Alta HR and the Jawbone Up 2.

Finally, if you sleep next to someone who snores, and of course, I believe you when you say that though they snore, you never do, then help is on its way. QuietOn Sleep is a pair of earplugs with noise-cancellation that is specifically designed to keep snoring noises and other low-bandwidth sounds from reaching your hearing. It’s on Indiegogo right now but is due to go on sale towards the end of the year.