Did you sleep well tonight? I bet a lot of you can’t give me a positive answer to this simple question. Either you had trouble falling asleep, or you woke up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason, or maybe that stupid alarm clock woke you in the middle of the most interesting dream you were having.
Like it or not, sleep is an essential part of our lives. It’s like a magic self-healing potion that revitalizes our bodies and minds. At least that’s the theory. 62% of American adults experience a sleep problem a few nights per week. The increasing popularity of sleep tracking smartphone apps and wearable gadgets also proves sleep is still a big mystery for a lot of us. And while sleep tracking can tell you how much sleep you’re getting, it can’t give you the full picture of what’s going in your bedroom without additional sensors.
That is why a lot of you seem to be keen on placing one of your CubeSensors in your bedroom, where we spend about a third of our days. By combining data with your favorite sleepy tracker, it’s easy to see if there’s something wrong in your bedroom. Before we try some real-life experiments with that, let’s take a look at the basic characteristics of your indoor environment that are needed for a good night’s sleep!
1) Temperature: steady and lower than in other rooms
Do you sometimes wake up covered in sweat? Your bedroom is too hot. While we do have our own individual preferences, you’ll usually sleep better if you keep your bedroom at a slightly lower temperature than your living spaces. Avoid going above 75°F (24°C) or below 54°F (12°). Some even say the sweet spot lies between 60° and 68°F (16 and 20°C). Having a consistent and not too hot bedroom (around 68°F or 20°C) is especially important for small children. Thermostats, connected to your heating and air conditioning system, can help you keep the temperature constant.
2) Humidity: find the golden mean
Balancing humidity can be a tricky act, but it’s even more important for health in our bedrooms. Dry winter air can cause dry skin, irritated throats, and makes cold, flu and other viruses feel right at home. In summer, high humidity will encourage mold growth and make various bugs happy. That’s why your bedroom humidity levels should be around 50% all year around. You can increase humidity with a humidifier, decrease it with a dehumidifier or with the help of your air conditioner’s dry mode. Just make sure not stray too far above or below the golden mean.
3) Air quality: keep your VOC levels in check
Your shiny new mattress might be super comfortable to sleep on, but it might also be emitting harmful VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) into the air you breathe in while you’re in the most delicate state. In fact, researches have discovered a link between indoor air pollution and sleep-disordered breathing.
The new mattress smell? You don’t want to be surrounded by that giant bucket of VOCs in you sleep. Let the mattress do its initial off-gassing in a well-ventilated room for a few days. Old mattresses and old carpets are also among other common VOC-emitting offenders. Don’t be tempted to use air-fresheners to mask all the bad smells though; it’s a much better idea to let some fresh air from the outside flow through the bedroom before sleep. Keeping windows open during summer can also be beneficial, but not if you live in a high humidity area or if the temperature drops too low during the night.
4) Noise: consistent noise might be helpful
It’s pretty obvious that a noisy snoring partner, a bored cat or partying neighbors can wake you up. A bit less obvious are noises we don’t consciously notice, but that are loud enough to prevent us from reaching a deep sleep state. In nature, noise means possible danger, so we’re used to paying attention.
If you live in a noisy neighborhood and can’t do much about recurring noises, it can help to have consistent background noise playing. In this way, you train yourself to just ignore the noise alltogether. There are a lot of smartphone apps that provide background noises of different kinds, from city traffic sounds to relaxing rainfall. If you get used to sleeping with a consistent noise, it can even help you get a good night’s sleep while traveling and sleeping in hotels with a different noise footprint. Alternatively, you can try blocking out all sounds by wearing earplugs, which, unfortunately, isn’t always a comfortable choice.
5) Light: darkness means sleep
Once upon a time, we lived a simpler life without artificial light. Our bodies used darkness as the universal sign for sleep. These days, we’re making it really tricky for our bodies to get the right signal. We stay up late watching bright TV or computer screens. It’s no wonder that our bodies are left confused when we suddenly turn off the light and expect to fall asleep immediately.
In fact, it takes a bit more darkness for our bodies to release enough melatonin, the sleep hormone, which relaxes you and takes you away into the sweet land of sleep. That is why it’s best to keep your bedroom free of any shiny gadgets. Even an alarm clock with a bright LED display can confuse the body and make you paranoid about your wake up time. What’s more, a full moon or street lighting can be bright enough to rouse you from sleep. Use blinds on your windows or a sleeping mask to make sure it’s dark enough and your body gets the right message!
Your bedroom environment is part of the sleep equation
There are of course other factors that can make you sleep better or worse, from what/when/how much you eat to your daily stress levels. The best way to find what’s preventing you from getting a good night’s sleep is to keep a sleep diary that logs the time of sleep and other relevant information. Just don’t forget to add important environmental data to the equation!
If you’re following us either on Facebook, Twitter or Google+, you might have noticed that we decided to do a little experiment last week. Armed with iPhones and the Wikipedia page on air-filtering plants, we brought into our office eleven plants of five different kinds that are supposedly beneficial for air quality (and were available at the nearby plant store): Calathea, Dracaena Marginata, Ficus Benjamina, Ficus Mix, Ficus Twilight. On top of that, we almost got a meat eating plant for our CTO, but that’s a story for another time.
Houseplants, VOCs and air quality
At the office, we placed one of our prototype Cubes in the middle of the newly created plant jungle, kept the windows closed, and started paying even more attention to the Cube’s air quality data. You might already know that our CubeSensors use a VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) sensor to determine air quality.
The theory, originating from a NASA lab research back in the 1980’s, is that some plants are capable of removing certain kinds of VOCs, such as formaldehyde, from the air. Interestingly enough, plants are also known to use VOCs as a form of communication in case of impeding danger. We kept insects and all our cats, dogs, and children out of the office, so it’s pretty safe to say that our plants had no need to trigger these kinds of alerts.
The experiment begins with impressive results!
We were at the edge of our seats in the first few hours of the experiment. The green line of the chart below shows VOC levels in the bigger shared office, filled with plants, where we were working during the day. The blue line shows the VOC levels of the connected smaller, temporarily unoccupied office. The blue background on the chart shows recommended VOC levels, the lines on the horizontal axis mark hours.
In the first few hours of the day, you can see the levels we usually observe at the office. VOC levels rise in the morning when we arrive at the office, and are slightly higher in the occupied office due to our presence (green line).
The sudden dip in the green line is when we went shopping for plants. We did accidentally disconnect the shared office Cube from its power source while moving things around to accommodate the new visitors, so the dip and initial lower values are understandable. (Note: the Cubes that we’ll be shipping will of course have rechargeable batteries, but some of our current prototypes don’t.)
After about an hour, the VOC sensor on the shared office Cube (green line) started coming back to its senses and the VOC levels start rising again, almost in sync with the levels of the smaller office. This is again expected behavior, as the CubeSensors team was working hard, sweating over all the little details of Cube magic. But the funny thing is that the green line of the occupied office with plants should have risen over the blue line, where there was nobody breathing, sweating or eating! Were the plants working their magic?
Not so fast: are air-purifying houseplants a myth?
We returned to the office the next day, excited to repeat the success of the previous day. But guess what? Didn’t happen. The green line was consistently a little over the blue line, as it had been with no plants involved. What we saw on the first day was perhaps just beginner’s luck or the VOC sensor that was still coming to its senses. We did try talking to the plants, playing soothing music, but couldn’t repeat the result.
“Over the past few years, there has been some publicity suggesting that houseplants have been shown to reduce levels of some chemicals in laboratory experiments. There is currently no evidence, however, that a reasonable number of houseplants remove significant quantities of pollutants in homes and offices. Indoor houseplants should not be over-watered because overly damp soil may promote the growth of microorganisms which can affect allergic individuals.”
Oh well, it was worth giving it a try nonetheless. Does this mean we’re getting rid of the plants? No, I think we’ll keep them for a while, see if anything interesting comes up along the way. They might not be the magic bullet for fixing indoor air quality, but it is relaxing to rest your eyes on them in between breaks.
Thinking about getting houseplants?
Our final verdict is that plants are not a replacement for air-filtering systems or the good ol’ opening the windows despite all the “Top 10 air-purifying houseplants” lists you can find online. Sure, all plants will turn some carbon dioxide (CO2) into oxygen, but the best way to achieve good air quality is by getting rid of sources of indoor air pollution, with a little help from good ventilation.
That said, we do think that plants can be a nice decorative addition to homes and offices, as long as you take proper care of them. While forgetting to water plants is a common concern, over-watering is even more dangerous if it leads to mold growth. And if you’re a cat lover like myself, don’t forget that a lot of common houseplants are toxic for cats or dogs! Always make sure to go with pet-friendly plants that won’t put your furry friends at risk.
I hope you enjoyed reading about our little office experiment. If there are other home or office experiments you’d like to see us try while we wait for the first proper Cubes to come out of the production line, please do let us know!
All the cool tech companies are trying to compete for the craziest and most unique looking working space. They sure do look cool, but do the buildings and their respective indoor environments have what it really takes to make the workers happy and productive?
A study* based on reports of over 52,980 occupants of 351 office buildings over ten years found out that the most important parameters for workplace satisfaction are: amount of space, noise levels, visual privacy. In other words, we’d all be happiest and most productive with a spacious office with a big window that provides a quiet and private haven of productivity.
The amount of space in an office was the king of the 17 workspace and building parameters influencing satisfaction regardless of age, gender, overall workplace satisfaction and type of office. Interestingly enough, the satisfaction with the amount of space wasn’t directly related to the amount of space available to each person. What seems to matter the most is having the feeling that we have enough space to do our work undisturbed.
Noise levels were the runner up in the race for the happiest office. That’s one of the parameters that is easily measured by devices like CubeSensors. We already discussed the effects of noise on productivity on our blog. If you’re trying to focus on a very important task, it’s certainly better to be in a quiet environment. However, if you need a burst of creativity, moderate noise around 70 dB might actually be better.
Another interesting finding of the mentioned workplace satisfaction study was that sitting within 4.6 m (15 feet) from the windows seemed to be the winning ticket in the satisfaction lottery. That is part of the reason why shared offices and cubicles with occupants further away from a window reported lower workplace satisfaction levels. Not surprising, given the fact that natural light coming from windows helps maintain good health and even has positive effects on productivity (source).
And while the participants of the study were generally satisfied with their workspace and overall building comfort, sound privacy and indoor environmental quality (temperature, noise level and air quality) had the highest levels of dissatisfaction and complaints. By improving these environmental parameters, offices could do that little extra to improve both the perceived and actual comfort and productivity. That is exactly why we believe it’s important to keep an eye on what’s going on in your environment. It is only when you have the actual measurements that you can plan the necessary improvements before your employees or coworkers start complaining about headaches and other problems.
* Frontczak M, Schiavon S, Goins J, Arens E, Zhang H, and Wargocki P. April 2012. Quantitative relationships between occupant satisfaction and aspects of indoor environmental quality and building design. Indoor Air Journal, Volume 22, Issue 2, 119-131. Available at: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1wc7t219
