Maybe a year ago, I was planning on having a sleep study done. At some point in my 30s I stopped feeling like I was recovering when I slept. I decided, however, that there were some things that I could work on improving before having a sleep study.
Most of what I addressed falls under sleep hygiene: Blackout curtains, better sheets, better blanket/comforter, better pillows, a better mattress, a sleep mask, reducing noise. It took a while to sort all of this out. "Better" is also subjective.
I also slowly worked on getting to bed earlier. I used to get into bed around 11:30pm. Now I'm in bed between 9:30 and 10pm. I read a little bit and then sleep. I stopped having calories after ~7pm.
We have young children, too. 3 under 3. I sleep very well now. Despite the regular interruptions I actually feel like I am getting the highest quality sleep of my adult life right now.
The blackout curtains, though... The difference they made from one day to the next was immediately obvious. My wife and I both woke up feeling more refreshed, looked at each other and said, "Why did we wait so long to do this?"
Recently bought some Hue smart lights to simulate sunrise with blackout curtains which is helping. Next up, motorized blinds that open at a scheduled time.
(#firstworldproblems)
They are permeated with little holes that allows light and sound in if they have not fully descended. If they have then the little holes are folded shut.
I’ve found the same issue where if they’re completely down waking up is hard, so I leave the top two rows of holes open to let in natural light.
I think having a small amount of light gradually filtering in helps a bunch to wake-up.
Video of shutters - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_KePLmie7lE
Small correction: not metal, these are (mostly) made out of plastic nowadays, sometimes aluminum, and earlier, from wood.
But yes, the effect if they aren't fully closed, is nicely adjustable to limit light without making a room pitch fark.
I was a bit annoyed at first and considered tweaking the mechanism to close the shutters fully, but in the meantime the impact this tiny changes has made on my and my girfriend's sleep patterns is tremendous and now I think I'll leave it that way.
We used to be very late sleepers, I work from home and regularly wouldn't wake up until 11AM or so. Now at 8:30 sharp I'm awake and ready to get up. It's a pleasant way of waking up too, I can tell that my body is sort of meant to be woken up that way instead of using an alarm sound. Obviously it also means that I get tired much earlier at night. But overall it seems like a positive change, especially since I'm in my mid-thirties and it's not like I regularly party all night anymore and I appreciate getting more time to do stuff in the morning.
I automate what I can at home - the CHO (Chief Home Officer - my wife) mostly disapproves because of some weird concerns about reliability (70% of availability for lights is that I call great, but opinions vary).
There is a simple solution for the shutters - you can use a Shelly 2.5 (https://shelly.cloud/products/shelly-25-smart-home-automatio...) that you connect in parallel to the shutter. It works wonders if you have a manual switch on the wall and probably with a remote too (I specifically asked for a manual switch on the wall). You can program the device itself to open the shutters at, say, 10 minutes before sunrise or whatever. You can easily remove them when you leave your flat and reuse somewhere else.
The Real Solution For Real Hackers (c) is to use Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/). <flamewar on> Do not settle for inferior systems such as jeedom, domoticz, ... </flame war off please do not hunt me>
If you have electronic shutters, most of these are a simple 230V based system: one neutral line and two 230V inputs, one for each direction. Hacking them is easy, get two programmable 230V relays (e.g. use a Raspberry Pi relay board) and never ever activate both relays at the same time.
This too is a bit generalised, as ours do fully close. In fact they actually snap into place to activate a break in barrier. This makes it harder to break in, as they can not be easily pushed up or removed.
Yes, I want! Have wanted for years, in fact. Hard to get here in the US, however.
I found that to help quite a bit and as a bonus they are portable and much more economical than motorized blinds or blackout curtains.
That being said motorized shades do seem pretty neat and may have a privacy advantage depending on where you live.
Turns out there was a streetlight that would hit her in the face and was causing her to wake up. We didn't realize it until we got the blackout curtains.
If you want a cheap test, you can tape aluminum foil over your bedroom window(s) for a night (learned this from The Martian!). It will fully block all light, and you probably already have what you need to try it in your home. Note that it does have the downside that from the outside you look like a crazy person.
I also use this trick when traveling - some AirBnBs have crazy thin curtains.
And our only source of light at night prior was a street light outside our bedroom window.
Have blackout blinds on every window upstairs so thats its dark enough during summer mid day sun to sleep. They keep the heat out during the summer (to the point I dont need the air conditioning on albeit on the hottest days and the warmth in during the winter which contributes to energy saving, the only downside is the air gets stagnant in small buildings.
I believe a lot of German homes also have external blinds over their windows for similar reasons plus they offer a layer of security making it harder to break in, but then what do the Germans know?
100lux is quite bright, I have a lux meter and here in the UK 100-200lux is a really cloudy winters day level of brightness, where as a bright summertime day will exceed tens of thousands lux for comparison.
Its because light affects the release of melatonin black out blinds are fitted. Melatonin increases the release of stem cells and stem cells play their part in repairing the body, but like I say earlier, CO2 levels building up cause the body to be stimulated even during sleep so sleep is not as refreshing as it could be in small homes and almost all UK homes are small, but hey the CO2 helps contribute to an increase in GDP and thats all that counts!
I think that’s relative to daylight, which already is 1,000 lx under an overcast sky, 10,000 in full daylight, 100,000 in full sunlight.
God bless Europeans and their cutting edge roll shutter technology, I can sleep in total darkness despite the street lamp 10m away from my bedroom window. And ye[, it definitely makes a difference.
It is true that well-behaved airlines, who take an active interest in fatigue prevention, do try to book hotel rooms with blackout curtains and good sound proofing. This is however not a universal behaviour and not all destinations where layover is necessary have any hotels with these qualities.
I would say an overhead light is a significant amount of light, but wonder how low the threshold is for sleep disruptions. Living in an urban environment, there's a non-negligible amount of ambient light that makes its way in. I don't use a set of blackout curtains, but I know several friends that say it makes a real difference.