Summer is a wonderful time of year. Those long, light days, the warmth of the sunshine (at least some of the time), the prospect of days on the beach, barbecues, warm beer and cricket, music festivals, airshows, glorious days out on the countryside and fine afternoons eating and drinking al fresco at a restaurant or pub, or sitting out in the garden.
It all sounds so wonderful and, unless you have hayfever and avoid sunburn or the England cricket team can’t get out of their rut, there should be much to look forward to. But it can have another side.
While you won’t need to spend much money heating or lighting your home in the summer, which will be very welcome after all the recent price hikes, the bedroom may not be quite as comfortable a place as it is at other times of the year.
Although winter can bring plenty of cold and require warm blankets, hot water bottles and thermal night clothes, the summer can provide the reverse problems, with hot spells by day sometimes turning into airless, sticky nights, even when you have the windows open.
When it gets like that, some nights can be disrupted by electrical storms, with the various booms and flashes often proving very hard to sleep through.
That is not all. The light days with late sunsets and early sunrise can also disrupt sleep. While some can sleep through this and others can handle less sleep in the light months, others will find their metabolism isn’t quite so happy with the seasonal extremes that arise in June and July.
Even down south, 16 hour days will be the norm in June and these can be as long as 18 hours or more in the north of Scotland.
To deal with all this, a range of measures will be needed to adjust your bedroom. In particular, if you struggle with the extra light, it makes sense to invest in products like blackout pencil pleat curtains, which will not only keep the light out, but are shaped in a way that will prevent them being easily blown this way and that by any light breeze that comes through an open window on a hot night.
Furthermore, they are thick enough to keep out excessive sound from outside. This may be useful during those aforementioned thunderstorms (as well as keeping out the light from lightning flashes). It can also keep out external sound such as birdsong and morning traffic, which might be more intrusive if you have a window open.
As these are also attractive and stylish, they will add plenty to the décor of your bedroom at the same time, so you will not be sacrificing any aesthetic qualities just to make sure the room is dark enough when the lights are off and the curtains closed.
Indeed, you might even want to keep them closed for part of the day as well, as this will prevent too much heat getting into the bedroom, especially if the window faces south and it will capture the hottest sunshine of the day.
At the same time, there is much you can do to keep the heat down besides opening a window - and that doesn’t mean having air-conditioning fitted. After all, that would be something you wouldn’t use most if the year and would use up energy at a time when reduced bills will be a particularly welcome seasonal benefit.
You are likely to be wearing less yourself but, apart from that, the bedclothes will need to be much lighter indeed, with the duvets definitely back in the cupboard until at least August.
Cotton is a particularly useful material for lighter summer blankets. Its properties for regulating temperature include enabling air to flow and this allowing heat to escape. Moreover, if it starts to get sweaty, it draws moisture away, which is also a reason why cotton clothing is so useful to wear on hot days.
In addition to all this, a few handy life hacks can make it a bit cooler. You might even make the cotton sheets wet and ring them out, allowing them to be cool and moist when it is really hot. Or, to improve the benefits of an open window, you could hang a wet cloth over that window to ensure the air coming in is colder.
By getting your bedroom equipped for the sticky and light nights of summer, you can ensure much better sleep, so that you feel refreshed and energised when you get up and thus ready to make the most of the summer days.