House drops to about 18C overnight and I keep the bedroom cool on purpose because I sleep badly when it's warm. The problem is my feet stay cold for the first forty minutes and I'm clearly lying there awake because of it. Hot water bottle helps then goes cold, so does anyone actually sleep in socks and does it survive the whole night?
I did it wrong first: thick hiking socks, because thicker seemed better. I woke up at 2am sweating with the duvet kicked off, twice a week, for a month before I connected the two things.
Switched to a thin merino liner sock and it's been fine for two winters. If you're going to try this, go thinner than feels correct. The point is the first thirty minutes, not insulation all night.
Disagreeing with the sock crowd, mildly. Socks make me overheat by 3am no matter how thin, and I'd rather not wake at all than fall asleep eight minutes faster.
What works for me is a hot water bottle placed at the foot of the bed twenty minutes before I get in, and removed when I do. Bed is warm, feet warm up from the sheets, and there's nothing on me to overheat later. Costs nothing and the bottle going cold stops being a problem because it isn't in the bed by then.
The remove-it-before-you-get-in trick is underrated. All the benefit of the warm bed, nothing in there to overheat you at three.
I tracked it for a fortnight because I was curious and I already log bedtime and wake time in a notebook. Fourteen nights, alternating. Socks nights I estimated sleep onset at 15 to 20 minutes, no-sock nights at 30 to 45.
That's self-reported and I knew which condition I was in, so treat it accordingly. But the gap was big enough that I stopped caring about the methodology and just wear the socks.
Sheepskin slippers for the hour before bed did it for me without anything on my feet in the bed itself. Feet arrive warm, room stays cold, nothing to kick off at 3am. Worth trying before you fight with sock thickness.
Warm the feet, cool the room. How you get the feet warm is a detail. If socks wake you later, warm them before bed instead.
@blistermaps · 2mo ago · 3 replies
Socks every night for six years, thin merino, and I fall asleep noticeably faster with them. The bit that clicked for me is that a cool room and warm feet aren't in conflict — you want the room cool and the hands and feet warm, because that's how your body dumps heat before it drops core temperature.
So the sock isn't fighting the cold room, it's helping the cold room work. That reframing stopped it feeling like cheating.
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@quiet_stacker · 2mo ago
Same realisation for me. Once you see it as helping your body dump heat rather than trapping it, the thin sock stops feeling like cheating.
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@tarp_and_tea · 2mo ago
The cool room and warm feet not being in conflict is the part I had backwards. I'd been treating socks as undoing the cold room I'd deliberately created.
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