April to some in India sounds like a disaster if you know what we mean. The fan is one of four. Out comes the AC remote from the drawer. The nights are getting longer and hotter, and around 2 a.m., you find yourself tossing and turning in bed, sweaty and restless, wondering why sleep has become so elusive. Most people blame the heat. But a poorly-prepped bedroom makes Indian summer ten times worse than it needs to be.
The good news is that there’s no need to spend a lot of time or money, or make sweeping changes, to ready your bedroom for Indian summer. Making a few easy switches before April rolls in can make a world of difference to how well you sleep your way through May and June. This is a simple checklist to go through.
Switch Your Bed Sheets First
This is the most significant change you can make. If you are still sleeping on the same sheets you slept on throughout winter, heavy, thick or made with synthetic fabric, change them out immediately. Winter sheets are designed to trap heat. In summer, that heat is working against you all night.
For Indian summer, switch to 100% cotton bed sheets with a thread count of 180-250. Cotton breathes, wicks away sweat, and will keep your body cooler than any synthetic fabric. Percale weave is ideal; it has a crisp, cool feel that sateen and microfiber cannot match in warmer weather. In any non-AC room in Delhi, Mumbai or Chennai, this one change will make your sleep that much easier.
Check Your Pillow Covers
Pillow covers are often overlooked when changing bed sheets. Your pillow cover touches your face and neck directly every night. A thick or synthetic pillow cover can trap heat around your head and neck, two areas of the body that generate some of the highest levels of heat when sleeping.
For summer, switch to lighter 100 per cent cotton pillow covers. The same rules apply as for bed sheets, 100 per cent cotton, basic weave, light shade. Dark colours absorb heat, while white and light pastels appear cooler. If your pillow covers are old and have become somewhat scratchy or pilled, get rid of them. That scratchy material pressed against your face on a warm evening is profoundly unpleasant, and there’s no reason for it.
Take Country Blankets and Quilts Out
Take out anything heavy from your bed and go through it. The thick quilts, heavy blankets and layers of mattress covers that used to make the winter cosy are now heat traps. Stow them properly in a cool, dry place, and fold them into a cotton bag rather than a plastic bag so the fabric can breathe.
Keep a light cotton blanket or thin dohar handy on nights the AC brings too much chill, and for those few cold evenings in March before summer sets in fully. All the rest goes into storage until October. In Indian summer, a lighter, cleaner bed with simply a decent cotton sheet and an ultra-light woollen cover is actually better than a heavily layered one.
Look at Your Curtains
Curtains do more work in the summer than many people think. The heat from the sun fills very dry areas like a sponge, saturating the walls, floor, or furniture underneath. By evening, your room is expelling all the stored heat back into the space where you sleep.
Replace your bedroom windows with heavier or blackout curtains before the summer reaches its zenith. Draw them through the hottest part of the day, around 11am and 5pm, when direct sunlight should be avoided. When the sun sets and the outside temperature drops, even a little, open windows and curtains to bring in cooler air. Places like Delhi: a gentle breeze after 9pm can help if your room isn't steaming from the sun all day.
Sort Out Your Fan Situation
Make sure your ceiling fan is working at full capacity and that it’s clean before summer arrives. Over the course of winter, layers of dust accumulate on fan blades and a dusty fan moves less volume and recirculates dust particles into your living space with every use. Before you switch to summer mode, wipe fan blades down with a damp cloth.
If your fan has a reversible direction setting, most new ceiling fans do, be sure it’s set to run anticlockwise as you look up at it. This directs the air straight down, creating the cooling breeze effect. Clockwise rotation, which pulls the air up and is a winter setting, does the opposite of what you want in summer. An unknotted fan blowing clean air in the proper direction can move orders of magnitude more useful air than a knotty one spinning backward.
Cool Down Your Mattress
Especially in rooms that get direct afternoon sun, your mattress absorbs and retains heat throughout the day. No matter how light your sheets, a hot mattress beneath you only exacerbates the problem. A thin cotton mattress protector provides a breathable barrier between you and the mattress, helping protect it from sweat damage over time.
If you don’t already have one, it’s worth picking up before summer. Seek a 100 per cent cotton mattress protector, no quilts, no padding, no waterproof. Plain cotton that breathes. It affects how cool your bed’s surface feels when you get in, and it prolongs a mattress's life by a significant amount.
Have a Fresh Set of Sheets on Hand
It sounds so simple and yet this really does help on difficult summer nights. Have one full spare set of freshly laundered cotton sheets nearby. On those awful May and June nights, you know, when you wake at 3 a.m. in a sweat, nothing is going to help your sleep more than quickly stripping off warm sheets and throwing on a cool fresh set.
Wash and dry your sheets weekly all summer long. In warmer cities such as Delhi, Jaipur and Chennai, fabric accumulates dust and sweat quickly. Washing weekly keeps sheets fresh and cool rather than stale and warm. In the monsoon in Mumbai, wash every 5 days to combat humidity and mold.
A Quick Summer Bedroom Checklist
Use percale bed sheets made of 100% cotton with a TC of 180–250. Substitute a pillowcase with a light cotton Put away all heavy blankets and quilts until October. Hang thicker drapes and leave them closed until the hottest part of the day is over. Dust the ceiling fan and ensure that it runs in an anticlockwise direction. Use a thin cotton mattress protector. Wash weekly, keep one extra set of fresh sheets handy.
None of this is complex or costly. But all of these little things done together before April do make Indian summer truly more slumberous.
Who’s Ready to Make the Shift to Summer Sheets?
If your existing bed sheets could use an upgrade, Belong India produces 100%cotton bed sheets designed specifically for Indian homes and Indian weather. Breathable, fitting Indian mattresses, and designed to last hundreds of weekly washes through our Indian summer. Browse the full range at www.belongindia.com and switch before the heat sets in.
Written by Shivangi Singh