Laurie and Ebony bought me a Fitbit last year and I have been obsessively tracking my sleep ever since. It uses my heart rate to work out when I’m asleep, what sleep stage I am in and how frequently I am disturbed (all the time). If I’ve had more than seven hours sleep, I spend the day feeling like I have won the lottery of life. If I’ve had six hours sleep, I’m good to go. If it’s edging closer to five, I’m probably best off avoided. And if it’s less than four (which is rare, but it does happen), the whole day is ruined.
We decorated our bedroom when I was pregnant with Ember and a bigger bed was at the top of my list. Double beds are fine but they’re really not built for family life. As soon as a kid climbs into your bed at 4am, there’s no room for you to get any sleep. When I was looking at beds, there wasn’t enough of a difference between a double and a king. Our room isn’t huge, but we decided to go all out and get a super comfy king size bed.
According to John Lewis, UK beds are getting smaller. They reported a 50% increase in sales of ‘small double’ beds in 2015. Small double beds are 15 cm shorter than traditional doubles. With people getting taller, it’s surprising that shorter beds would be growing in popularity. Bed Guru’s #SleepGuru campaign is encouraging people to think big when it comes to beds. Here’s why I’m glad I opted for the biggest bed I could buy:
1. There’s room for everyone
It doesn’t matter whether you’re sharing your bed with a lover, a furry friend or all of your children, there needs to be space for all of you. There is nothing worse than lying in bed at night, squashed and awake, longing for your own space. When we co-slept with Ebony, I always had a toddler-sized foot or knee or fist in my face and it was terrible. So, this time, we invested in a big bed and now everybody has enough room. Even when Ebony appears in the early hours of the morning, there’s plenty of space for her to snuggle in without pushing anyone else out of the bed.
#2: It puts the focus on sleep
Bedrooms are for sleeping. They should be calm and cosy and inviting. They don’t need huge televisions or surround sound or other distractions. It needs to be a place you can switch off and unwind. Having a super king bed has meant there isn’t much room for anything else, so the room is all about sleep. This wasn’t deliberate, but it’s a happy consequence of getting a big bed.
#3: There’s plenty of storage
A super king bed might take up lots of room, but that doesn’t mean you have to go without storage. I chose a bed with storage drawers underneath so there’s plenty of room for spare bedding, clothes and VHS home videos (do other people hang on to those or is it just me with a weird stash of home videos I can’t actually watch?). And, rather than sitting in sideboards or wooden chests, these things are hidden away under the bed so the room feels more minimal than it really is (you can’t be minimal if you have a drawer of VHS tapes in 2017).
#4: I get enough sleep
I would part with any amount of money to be able to sleep. Sleep is truly one of my favourite things and it is so hard to come by now that I have children. They wake up early, they wake in the night, they demand my attention even at 3am. On the rare occasions that I actually manage some sleep, I don’t want my bed to hold me back. I want to have a comfy bed with plenty of space and soft bedding so that if, by some miracle, my children leave me alone for eight consecutive hours, I can actually spend that time sleeping. That’s why the bed was a worthwhile investment and why I will never go back to sleeping in a smaller bed.
In collaboration with Bed Guru.