How to upgrade your bedroom for a better night's sleep

Getting the perfect night's sleep is something that eludes many of us, despite having more technology, hacks and routines for doing so available to us than ever before.

When it comes to nailing your 40 winks, it all comes down to the basics, and a lot of us are still struggling to get those right thanks to busy lifestyles, bad habits and every day realities of renting or sharing your space with a partner or family members.

Most of us can't change big things like our work-life balance, our family set up or the layout of our rented homes overnight, but we can make small tweaks that help us get better sleep.

In a recent survey, IKEA Ireland found that some core factors played the biggest role in getting good sleep: temperature, comfort, light, sound, air quality, home furnishing and declutter.

The research, conducted by iReach Insights, surveyed 1,000 Irish adults about their sleeping habits, with 74 per cent saying comfort was their main priority, followed by temperature at 65 per cent.

Sleeping differences can lead to relationship hiccups, too: 33 per cent of people admit to arguing with their partners over duvet-hogging, while 25 per cent lose sleep thanks to their partner's snoring.

Amazingly, one in 20 people have even ended a relationship due to incompatible sleep habits, the research showed.

Guilherme Barros, IKEA Ireland Sleep Expert, explained some easy, accessible tweaks that you can make to help your sleep, starting with eliminating the nightly battle for the duvet while ensuring you have the perfect temperature for your sleep.

Sharing doesn't always mean caring

He explains that one option is "a super Scandinavian way of having two separate duvets".

"Then you can decide, I have this cooler duvet, it's only four tog or it's only two tog and that's for me. But then for my partner who really needs that warmth, he can invest in on a 12 tog duvet, and that's fine."

Investing in a good mattress is central, but Barros notes how "overwhelming" an experience that can be. "I think a lot of it comes down to the buying process of the mattress because it can be quite a lot. You don't know what's the difference between pocket sprung and foam?"

Or what if you're a side sleeper and your partner sleeps on their back? "You don't think of all of that when you're investing in essentially the piece that you use the most. What piece in your house can you say, I use that every single day? It is the biggest investment in your bedroom."

Barros suggests really getting a feel for a mattress when shopping: "Don't just sit on the mattress. Lay down. How are you going to use it? We want customers to come to our stores and really have the experience that they would have at home. We don't want to be precious."

Clear the air

When it comes to air quality, investing in a dehumidifyer or air purifier is one solution, but so is adding plants to your space. "What I think a lot of people don't think initially about as well is adding plants to your bedroom. My husband, personally, he would be like, I don't want to plant in my bedroom", Barros says.

A room of dreams

When designing the room sets in store, Barros explained that they considered what a "dream" room is for Irish people, and lot of that comes back to hotel luxury. How can we recreate that at home?

"Your dream changes from certain areas of the home", he says. "We have definitely seen, especially around storage, when it comes to packs of wardrobes, there is a lot of people now really investing in that walk-in experience. But how can you do that walk-in experience in a more affordable way?

"I think that when we look at what is considered luxury, especially in Ireland, Irish customers, we say sturdy furniture." For customers, that often means an upholstered bed, volume in your furniture and textiles.

Adapt and adjust

For many households, whether it's a family or a couple, routines don't always match up: you could get up hours before your partner, or need to put your kids to bed at a certain time while still going on with the rest of your day. Barros explains how some small tweaks can make this more seamless.

"A lot of the times we're in a situation where I wake up at five o'clock in the morning, your partner might wake up at nine because he works from home. So how can I get ready without disturbing my partner?"

"A smart lighting system, such as IKEA's TRÅDFRI range, lets you connect to different lights at different times. "If I'm waking up, I can connect just the big light or I can just connect a light that is next to my wardrobe that I can just turn on, and you can dim it up and down."

Be realistic

Many of us say we'd like to keep our bedrooms phone-free but the reality is that a lot of us aren't there yet. How can you create some space between you and your phone at night time?

"I think the reality is that whilst we obviously want to create a sanctuary, how many people are actually going to leave their phones in another room?" Barros says.

"If we know that they're not going to leave their phone in another room, how can we create a solution for that? Is it that behind your bed, there is storage that sits behind your bed, which is a space that just goes so often unused, and then you put your phone there and it's tucked away on that side."