What is the ideal sleeping temperature?

Sleep experts recommend the best temperature for sleep to be around 18.3 degrees Celsius. When your bedroom is much warmer or colder than this, it can stop you from falling asleep and affect the quality of your rest when you do.

How does room temperature affect your sleep?

You need to feel comfortable to relax and fall asleep. So if the room is either too hot or too cold, you’ll struggle to nod off. The temperature of the room has a big effect on how well you sleep and how you feel in the morning too.

• When it’s too hot

The ideal bedroom temperature is slightly lower than a comfortable waking temperature. That's because our bodies feel sleepy in the evening before bedtime when our core body temperature starts to fall.

To start feeling sleepy, our core temperature needs to drop. If the room you’re in is too warm and your core temperature stays too high, you won’t benefit from this natural drowsiness, so you might have difficulty dropping off.

Once you do fall asleep, a room that’s too warm can make you restless and affect the quality of your Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, so you wake up tired. Getting a good night’s sleep is essential for our health, as it’s the time that our bodies are designed to rest, restore and rejuvenate.

Children are particularly sensitive to room temperatures and a bedroom that is too hot and dry could trigger breathing difficulties or other respiratory problems.

Older people are also more likely to suffer in a room that's too hot. Overheating at night can contribute to serious health issues in older people; like heart attacks, stroke and asthma.

• When it’s too cold

Equally, if your room is too cold, it will be harder to doze off and stay asleep. Cold hands and feet can stop you from falling asleep, while draughts can wake you up and disturb your sleep.

• When it’s just right

When your bedroom is at the ideal sleeping temperature of around 18 degrees Celsius, this supports melatonin production in your body. Melatonin not only helps to promote sleep but it can also affect ageing, weight loss and our moods.

So now you can see why it’s so important to make sure your rooms are at the right temperature for sleep.

How can you measure and control your room temperature?

There are many ways to control your room temperature so it’s ideal for sleep. To stop too much heat from escaping at night, it’s a good idea to properly insulate and draft-proof your home.

To make sure your rooms aren’t too hot to sleep, set your heating on a timer to reduce the temperature in the evening before bed time. Make sure you have several light layers of bedding that you can pull on and off as needed during the night.

Installing an air-to-air heat pump (also known as a reverse cycle room air conditioning unit) is an ideal way to measure and control the temperature of your rooms.

Daikin heat pumps are controlled by the easy-to-use Onecta app. You can use this app to change the temperature, review your energy consumption and set temperature schedules.

This means you can easily set your heat pump to drop the temperature of your room to the ideal sleeping temperature before bedtime.

Simply connect your air-to-air heat pump to your home network, download the Onecta app to your mobile phone and you'll have complete control, wherever you go. It’s compatible with all Daikin heat pumps (heating and cooling systems), giving you total control over your home environment.

As the Onecta app can be activated using Alexa or Google Home voice controls, you can be hands-free when you're using it too.

Discover our Daikin heat pumps and experience a better environment to sleep in