Create a peaceful environment in your bedroom

The week is only halfway and you are already feeling the strain. Work has been tough and your partner is away on a business trip, so there is no-one to help you cope. Sure, you have friends, but they are all just as busy as you are. So you can’t really go to them to find support. Then to top it all off, your bedroom is a mess because you just don’t have enough time to clean up and get ready for work in the mornings. Subsequently, you struggle to fall asleep at night. As tired as you are, sleep keeps on eluding you. When you close your eyes, all you can think of is work or the fact that you miss your partner. As you lie awake, all that you can think of is that you need to find a peaceful environment to fall asleep in…

If you are familiar with the scenario we described above, you might want to keep on reading. Or maybe you are still at school and you don’t have a partner that shares your bed, but you lie awake because you stress about the upcoming exams or tests? Moreover, you do all of your homework in your bedroom, so you start associating your bedroom with school. Doesn’t that just suck? Are you a student, with notes and projects lying around in your room? Do those varsity projects pull the eye immediately as you walk into your room? There are a myriad different reasons why your room can be a mess! If you feel that you struggle to fall asleep because your room just doesn’t feel like a place of rest anymore, read on!

In this blog, we will show you how to create a peaceful environment in your bedroom. An environment of rest and relaxation…

What is a peaceful environment?

Have you ever thought about this question? When someone asks you what you consider to be a peaceful environment, what is your answer? We asked the grand sage Google what she thinks of this question and the first thing that popped up was a humanitarian website that wants to promote world peace. So that wasn’t really helpful. But then we asked a couple of random people around town what they considered as peaceful. We got some pretty interesting answers, but for now let’s just stick to the replies that we got most often.

1. The beach

A lot of people said that the most peaceful environment they can think of is a beach. Pure white sand, crystal clear water, palm trees and the soft sound of waves lapping at the shore. Blue skies with puffy white clouds floating lazily across the horizon and in the distance the call of seagulls.

2. Forest

If people didn’t want to go to the beach, they wanted to go to the forest. Mist shrouded trees with the sound of birds and a brook gurgling in the background. Green everywhere with here and there a brilliant flash of colour as a startled bird takes flight or a butterfly hovers from flower to flower…

As you can see, most people do not associate busy city streets, electric lighting and crowds of people with a peaceful environment. However, the city is where most of us find ourselves. We have to work to eat, so we go where there are jobs.

How do we convert our city style bedroom to an idyllic, laid back room?

There are a few things that you can do to transform your bedroom to a haven of peace and quiet.

Bedroom Blues

First off, you have to ask yourself the question: When you think of your bedroom, does it make you happy or sad? A weird question, isn’t it? But the fact of the matter is that the way you feel about the place you sleep in has an impact on the quality of your sleep. Sleep specialists proved that the way we perceive our surroundings impact on how well we sleep.

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. In nature, animals do not just nod off anywhere. They make a den or a lair where they can go to sleep without the fear of being discovered. Us humans are quite similar. If we feel unsafe or anxious, our brains don’t really want to allow us to fall asleep. The brain wants us to be in a peaceful environment before it starts releasing the right chemicals for our bodies to start drifting off.

So, if you feel sad or anxious about your bedroom, you should consider a bedroom makeover. Remove the things that brings on the bedroom blues. If it is work, take it to the study and do it there. Don’t have a study? Do your homework in the kitchen then. Or do it in a library or a study centre. Whatever you do, just make sure that you get that work out of your sleeping quart environment?

Declutter your room

If you want to know how to declutter your room, click on this link to see how to declutter your bedroom in five easy steps. In the proposed article you will find lots of good advice on how to get your room tidy and less cluttered.

Put a pot plant in your room

So now that your room is less cluttered, you have space to put a small pot plant somewhere. Not only is it aesthetically pleasing, it can also improve the quality of your sleep. Why would a plant in your room make you sleep better? Because some of the plants we are about to suggest are great at removing carbon and other bad gasses from the atmosphere.

1. Spekboom

First on our list is the indigenous Spekboom. According to Garden and Home Magazine, the Spekboom can capture a lot of carbon and turn it into plant material. All photosynthesizing plants use carbon from the atmosphere to produce energy to grow, but the Spekboom captures more carbon than most other plants. After removing carbon from the atmosphere, plants produce oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis. In other words, if you have a lush plant in your room (like the Spekboom), you get treated to fresh oxygen all the time! Moreover, Spekboom is a low maintenance plant that doesn’t need a lot of water to grow. So if you tend to forget to water your plants, this one is for you.

2. Devil’s Tongue

The Devil’s Tongue is another good candidate when it comes to bedroom friendly plants. Devil’s Tongue is another one of those plants that are easy to grow and that removes a lot of bad gasses from the atmosphere. Formaldehyde, benzene and xylene are all harmful gasses. But with a Devil’s Tongue next to your bed, they won’t reach your lungs.

Get the lighting right

soft light is essential when you are busy preparing for bed. So instead of burning the overhead electrical light, get a lantern or a couple of candles to do the job of lighting your room at night. The blue light emanating from electric lights tells our brains that it is still day. So you can imagine that it might be difficult to fall asleep if your brain is convinced that it is not nighttime yet. Candles, on the other hand, do not radiate blue light. So if you prepare for bed on the soft glow of a candle or two, your brain will start releasing melatonin (the sleep hormone) and allow you to drift off to Dreamland in peace.

Just as important as setting the scene while you are preparing for bed is the amount of light after you blow out the candles. To create a peaceful environment that is conducive to good sleeping patters, you should try to get your room as dark as possible after lights out. We know that this can be quite tricky, especially if you live in the heart of the city. But you should try, nonetheless! Hang heavy, dark curtains over your windows or get thick blinds to block out the light from outside. Also, make sure that your cellphone lies face down. Those small LED lights that indicate you have a message can be quite the bother if you struggle to fall asleep.

Temperature is also important

No-one likes to be cold at night. But then again, no-one likes to lie in a puddle of sweat either. So if you want to have a peaceful environment in your bedroom, make sure that you get the temperature right!

Apart from the obvious fact that it is difficult to fall asleep in sweltering heat or blistering cold, temperature can influence the quality of your sleep. When we go to bed, our bodies start to slowly cool off. This cooling off lasts until just before dawn, when our bodies instinctively start to heat up again in preparation for the day ahead. If it is too warm or too cold in our rooms, our bodies can’t relax and reach that optimum temperatures that is needed to perform all of the things our bodies do at night (there are quite a few things, but more on that in another post).

According to Dr. Winter, a sleep expert, your room should be around 18 degrees Celsius when you hit the hay. If you want to know more on how to regulate your temperature at night, click here.

Get the right sounds going

If you look back at the descriptions of what people look for in a peaceful environment you’ll see that sound plays an important role. They don’t want to hear traffic or their neighbours yelling. People want to hear the soothing sounds of nature. Luckily for us, we can bring natural sounds to our bedrooms with modern technology. Whether you prefer the chirping of birds, the pitter-patter of rain on the roof or the distant sound of thunder, YouTube has it all! Moreover, if you don’t want to stream on YouTube all night, you can just download one of hundreds of apps from your app store. For instance, check out the Nature Sounds app.

If you do not like natural sounds, a lot of people use white noise apps to block out sound as well.

Colour your room

Another thing that jumps out at you if you look at the descriptions of what people look for in a peaceful environment is colour. So if your bedroom is depressing, it might have to do with the dark colours you have in there. Maybe paint the room out with a light blue or green. If that doesn’t work, go with eggshell or pure white.

And that’s it ladies and gentlemen! Peaceful environment, done. Sleep soundly tonight!