Why Do You Sleep Better in Hotels?

You check into a normal hotel on a Tuesday night, sleep like the dead, and wake up wondering why your own bed can't do that. Then you get home and the feeling disappears.

So is it the mattress? Mostly, no.

The short answer

Most of it comes from what the hotel room takes away rather than anything it adds. There's no washing waiting to go on, nobody getting into bed at a different time to you, no dog on the duvet and no half-finished jobs staring at you while you're trying to switch off. Put that together with a proper bedtime, thick curtains and a room that exists only for sleeping in, and you've already explained most of it before the bed even comes into it.

The bed still matters. It's just doing less of the work than people think.

Not everyone sleeps better in hotels

The stat you'll see everywhere is that about three quarters of people say they sleep better in a hotel. That one came from a survey paid for by a hotel booking company, which is worth knowing before you take it too seriously.

Sleep tracker data says something different. When you look at hours actually slept rather than how people felt about it, hotel guests come out slightly behind their own bedrooms.

The first night effect

There's a good reason for that. In a room you don't know, part of your brain stays on guard. Researchers call it the first night effect and it's well enough established that sleep labs throw away the first night's results as a matter of course. You take longer to drop off, you wake up at small noises and you get less deep sleep. It settles down from the second night, which is why night three of a holiday usually feels so much better than night one.

So who does sleep better?

Mainly people who weren't getting enough sleep at home in the first place. If you're short on sleep you tend to gain hours away from home, and if you already sleep plenty you tend to lose a bit. And if you're someone who lies awake most nights, getting out of the bed you've come to associate with lying awake can be a real reset on its own.

There's also the expectation. If you're checking in believing you're about to have a lovely night's sleep, you get into bed relaxed instead of anxious about whether you'll drop off, and that alone makes it easier to fall asleep. Expecting a bad night tends to give you one.

What the room takes away

Take away the marketing and hotel rooms do a few very ordinary things well.

They're clean and there's nothing in them. A room with a bed, a lamp and a chair gives your brain nothing to pick at. Clearing out your own bedroom sounds like lifestyle fluff but it's one of the few sleep tips that costs nothing and genuinely works.

They're dark and fairly quiet. Blackout curtains block the streetlight that stops your body producing melatonin properly, and thicker walls, heavier doors and the steady hum of a ventilation unit cover up the sudden noises that drag you out of deep sleep. A fan or a white noise machine at home does the same job for a lot less money.

The lighting helps too. Hotels tend to go for warm bulbs and a couple of bedside lamps rather than one bright light in the middle of the ceiling, so the room dims down in a way that feels a bit like a sunset. Your body reads that as a signal to start winding down. Most of us sit under a bright white ceiling light until the second we get into bed.

Where the room sits in the building matters as well. A room on a higher floor, away from the lift, the bar and the road, is a quieter room, and hotels that care about sleep put a lot of thought into that. It's also why two people can rate the same hotel completely differently.

And there are no decisions to make. There's nothing to do in a hotel room at 11pm except go to bed.

What's actually under the hotel sheets

This is the bit we can be more useful on than a general sleep blog, because contract beds are what we do all day.

The base. Most hotels use a sprung divan base rather than slats. A sprung base softens a firm mattress slightly and gives a bit of movement across the whole surface, which is why a hotel bed can feel soft and supportive at the same time. If your mattress is sitting on tired slats or straight on a frame, you're sleeping on a different bed to the hotel one even if the mattress is the same.

The layers. Under the sheet there's normally a protector, quite often a topper, then the mattress. That layering is most of what people mean by the hotel bed feel, and it's the part they then try to buy as a mattress. A decent topper on a mattress that's still sound will get you closer than a whole new bed.

The firmness. Hotel mattresses are firmer than they feel. They're usually medium-firm or a step up from that, because that keeps your spine in a straight line whether you sleep on your side, your back or your front, and it works for a wide range of body types. The softness you notice is added on top with quilting, a topper and the bedding. Pocket springs and hybrid builds also stop movement travelling across the bed, so your partner turning over doesn't wake you.

The bedding. Crisp cotton sheets, changed for every single guest, tucked in properly. It isn't glamorous and it makes a bigger difference than most people expect. Almost nobody changes their bedding as often as a hotel does.

The upkeep. Hotel beds get checked, turned and replaced on a schedule. Most of us keep a mattress for years past the point we should. If you're not sure where yours is up to, our guide to choosing the right mattress covers when it's actually worth replacing.

The cool room bit is mostly American

Nearly every article on this subject says hotels keep rooms between 65 and 68°F, which is about 18 to 20°C. The number is right. A cooler room helps your body temperature drop the way it needs to at bedtime, and breathable bedding helps it stay down.

The problem is assuming you can control it. Loads of UK hotel rooms have no air conditioning at all, the window opens about two inches and the usual complaint on a warm night is that the room is boiling. If you slept brilliantly in a British hotel in July, it almost certainly wasn't the temperature that did it.

At home you've usually got more say than a hotel guest does. Turn the bedroom radiator down, open a window for a bit before bed and go for a lighter duvet in summer.

Why it disappears when you get home

Because nothing about the bed changed. Everything around it did.

You're back with the school run in your head, the washing pile in the corner and the same drifting bedtime you had before you went away. The hotel didn't fix your sleep. It gave you one night off from all the things that were getting in the way of it.

What actually works at home

Roughly in order of how much difference they make:

• Going to bed at the same time. Boring, free, and the thing most people aren't doing.
• Making the room properly dark. Blackout curtains or a blind, and get the standby lights out of there.
• Keeping it cool. Aim for that 18 to 20°C range and use bedding that breathes.
• Changing your sheets more often. Weekly if you can. Cheapest upgrade going.
• Covering up noise. A fan or a white noise machine if traffic is waking you.
• Softer lighting in the evening. Lamps instead of the big light for the last hour.
• Keeping the bedroom for sleeping. No work, no clutter, ideally no phone.

You'll have noticed a new mattress isn't on that list. For most people it doesn't need to be. If your bed is still in good shape and you're sleeping badly, your money goes further on curtains and a topper than on replacing something that's doing its job perfectly well. A proper wind-down before bed will do more than either of them.

When your bed really is the problem

Sometimes the hotel bed is telling you something true. Look for a dip you can actually see where you sleep, a stiff back in the morning that eases off within an hour of getting up, feeling every move your partner makes, or a base that shifts and creaks every time you turn over. A creaky bed can usually be sorted out, but a sagging one can't.

If hotel beds consistently feel better than yours, think about what felt different. If it was the support holding you up better, that usually points at a mattress that's gone soft with age, and a firmer replacement is worth a look. A steadier surface with less bounce points at the base instead. Waking up hot points at your bedding rather than either of them.

One last thing worth saying plainly. If you never wake up feeling rested, not at home, not in hotels, not on holiday, that isn't a mattress problem. Snoring, gasping in the night or being wiped out all day can be signs of sleep apnoea, and that's one for your GP rather than a bed shop.