When hot summer nights keep you from getting a good night’s sleep, there are several things you can do to sleep more comfortably. Choosing the best sheets for hot sleepers is #1, and then finding ways to cool your room, body and bed are next! You’d be surprised at what a set of good quality bamboo sheets can do for your sleep, in any season.
Do Bamboo Sheets Really Keep You Cool at Night?
If you’ve never felt bamboo sheets, you simply need to feel them to believe! The moment they touch your skin you feel the cooling effects. They feel degrees cooler to the touch that most cottons. They’re also super breathable, so your sheets are not trapping heat during the night. Its all about the airflow of the fabrics that determine if you’ll be sleeping hot or cold. Bamboo sheets are also lightweight, so they drape amazingly against your skin. A nice bonus to bamboo is that its naturally hypoallergenic, which feels amazingly silky soft and comforting against your skin.
We call it a Smart Fabric, but many simply call bamboo sheets thermal regulating. This means they fibers can sense if you’re hot, and they release the heat, so you stay cooler. With that same line of thinking, they can sense if you’re cold in the winter, and they’ll keep your heat in. They’re a perfect all-season alternative to cotton!
What Fabrics are Best for Hot Sleepers?
Any fabric that is breathable will be your best choice. Top rated Bamboo sheets are one of the best fabrics to help keep you cool on hot summer nights. Silk, Viscose/Rayon Bamboo, and Performance Fabrics are shown to be the top picks for cooling sheets. Other attributes you should look for when shopping for luxury sheets are weight, breathability, absorption, evaporation, and comfort.
The feel of the fabric is so important too. When you’re hot and sweaty you likely don’t want a microfiber or jersey knit against your skin. Those can tug and pull at your skin, and keep heat trapped. Tip: crack a window! Keeping your room at 68 degrees or slightly cooler can greatly enhance your quality of sleep. Summer or winter, letting fresh air circulate in your room will keep you sleeping like a baby.
How to Cool Hot Sleepers – Hot Flashes – What Can I Do?
Look for moisture-wicking sheets, which pull the sweat away from your body and evaporate it faster than cotton. Bamboo sheets can absorb up to 40% more water than most other fabrics. The sweat on your body is what makes you feel super uncomfortable, so fabrics that pull it away from the skin keep you more comfortable. Menopausal women and hot-sleeper men struggle with falling asleep, even on the coldest winter nights. Tossing and turning and throwing the covers off is no fun, so anything you can do to prepare your body or room to fall and stay asleep will have the biggest impact.
Hot Flashes and Night Sweats are no joke, they can cause sleep disruption, mood changes, and weight gain. Reduced sleep can be a detriment at work causing your job performance to suffer. Being sleep deprived can create unsafe driving situations. So it’s very important to do what you can to maximize your sleep, so your awake-life doesn’t suffer.
If you are sweating profusely and soaking your sheets each night, try sleeping on top of a BedVoyage Bamboo Bath Sheet. The towel can absorb all the moisture and keep you from changing your bed sheets each day. Its much easier to wash a towel than an entire set of sheets!
How Bamboo Sheets Regulate Your Body Temperature:
When your sheets allow air to pass through; you stay cooler. The threads or yarns of bamboo textiles have micro-gaps and holes in them. This allows heat to pass through and not be trapped. If you’ve ever slept on super high thread count cotton sheets, you may have noticed that you were overly hot and uncomfortable.
When a fabric description says 800 or 1000 thread count, it means how many threads there are, per square inch. The higher the number, the denser the weave, which means they won’t be very breathable. BedVoyage linens are 300 thread count, which we feel is the sweet-spot between being silky soft yet super breathable. The other benefit is that bamboo sheets are super absorbent, so they’ll wick moisture away from your skin faster than most other fabrics.
How to Keep Cool in Summer with Bamboo:
What we like to call the ‘summer bed’ is the stripped-down version of your spring or fall bedding. You can remove any blankets, down comforters or duvet covers, and simply use a Flat Sheet as your cover. If you need a little bit of weight for comfort, you can add a lightweight blanket or just use the duvet cover with noting inside it. BedVoyage offers a cooling bamboo quilt as well, called the Coverlet. Its pretty lightweight, and can easily be folded down, or pulled up as needed.
You can also consider switching out your big fluffy pillow for a smaller, lightweight pillow. Having a pillow that engulfs half your head while sleeping may feel great in the winter, but its overly hot in the summer. You can toss your pillowcase (and pillow if it will fit!) into your freezer for 10-15 minutes before bed and enjoy a nice cool place to lie your head as you nod off.
Tips for Keeping Cool in Your Bamboo Sheets:
If it’s the height of summer and you need additional help, we offer several tips for enhancing your bamboo cooling sheets to sleep even better:
Remove all duvet covers and blankets from your bed. Sleep with just the flat sheet over your body.
With a spray bottle, spritz your flat sheet so that its lightly damp, it will cool you down considerably. Re-spritz as needed during the night.
Freeze your Sheets! No lie, you can seriously put your sheet set in a plastic bag, place in freezer for 15-20 minutes then place on your bed. Oh, so deliciously cool!
Stretch out, sleep like a Snow Angel, the extra space around your arms and legs will keep you cooler.
Take your bamboo flat sheet and sleep out on the deck, backyard, or hammock. The airflow will feel fabulous.
If you’d like to read a few studies on how bamboo sheets can keep you cooler, you can read them here.
Sweet Dreams~
