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Penn State study: Bright, hot or noisy bedrooms hurt young adults’ sleep quality

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A bedroom that feels too bright, too hot or too noisy can make for a worse night’s sleep for young adults, even if they still spend about the same amount of time asleep. That’s the finding of a new study led by Penn State researchers and published in the journal Sleep Health.

The researchers analyzed data from 372 young adults, average age 22, who took part in the Future of Families Young Adult Sleep Study. For 14 days, participants reported each morning how well they slept and whether light, noise or temperature had disturbed them. They also wore wrist sensors that objectively recorded when they slept, how long it took them to fall asleep, and how long and how well they slept.

The team measured perceived disruption rather than fixed readings in decibels, lumens or degrees, because what disturbs one sleeper may not bother another. A level of street noise that a city dweller ignores, for example, might seem extremely loud to someone who grew up in a rural area, said first author Adwoa Dadzie, a doctoral candidate in biobehavioral health at Penn State.

On nights when participants said their room was too bright, they fell asleep later, rated their sleep as poorer and woke more often during the night. Nights that felt too hot or too noisy were also linked to poorer sleep quality, a pattern that showed up in both the participants’ own reports and the sensor data. Feeling too cold had no effect the sensors could measure.

None of the three disruptions significantly reduced how long participants slept overall. The researchers suspect young adults may make up for a poor night by sleeping in, but said more research is needed to explain that result.

“Young adults often have little control over their sleep environments,” Dadzie said. “But habitual sleep disruptions can affect long-term health and development.”

Co-author Orfeu Buxton, a professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State, said noise can be especially problematic for sleepers. He added that building healthy sleep habits early makes it less likely that accumulated sleep loss will cause problems later in life.

For people who can’t control their surroundings, such as students in dorms or roommates in shared apartments, the researchers suggest simple fixes. Earplugs, noise-canceling devices or even cotton can block noise, and sleep masks or blackout curtains can block light. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention similarly advises keeping bedrooms quiet, relaxing and cool, and recommends that adults ages 18 to 60 get at least seven hours of sleep a night.

The study’s authors include researchers from Penn State, the University of Arizona, the University of Florida and Stony Brook University. The work was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health, and a consortium of private foundations.

Sources

Penn State News: Too noisy, too hot or too bright? Sleep environment matters for young adults · Sleep Health (journal article) · CDC: About sleep

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