Full dark and a little white noise
Okay. We're still in "cool, dark, boring," and last time was the temperature piece. This time is the other two thirds: dark, and boring.
We already covered blackout curtains a few lessons back, so I won't redo that whole thing. But dark isn't just curtains. It's every little glow in the room you've stopped noticing because you live there. The cable box. The charger light. The gap under the door where the hallway light gets in. Your brain notices those even when you don't, because part of its job is scanning for light changes while you sleep. That's not me being dramatic, that's just what the system does.
So here's the actual walkthrough. Go into your bedroom tonight after dark, before you turn anything off, and just stand there for a minute. Let your eyes adjust. You will be surprised what you can see. Every little LED is a tiny nightlight you didn't ask for.
What to do about it, cheapest first:
- Tape a bit of dark tape or a sticky note over anything blinking. Genuinely, this is most of the fix, and it costs nothing.
- Flip your alarm clock or charger away from the bed if it's the kind that glows.
- Get a door snake or a towel at the bottom of the door if hallway light leaks in. My in-laws had one of these forever and I thought it was a weird old-person thing until I needed one.
- If you've got streetlight coming through a gap at the edge of the curtain, a strip of black poster board taped to the inside of the window frame handles it. Not elegant. Works.
You don't need it pitch black like a cave. You need it dark enough that you couldn't read a book by it. That's the bar.
Now, boring. This is the part people skip because it sounds less like a tip and more like a mood. But a bedroom that's stimulating works against you. If your room is where you fold laundry, pay bills, watch TV, scroll — your brain doesn't know it's a sleep room, it knows it's a room where stuff happens. I'm not telling you to rip the TV out tonight. I'm saying: notice what else that room is asking of your brain, and see if you can quiet it down. Put the laundry basket somewhere else. Move the bill pile out. If you've got a TV in there, at minimum turn it off, don't leave it on with the blue light doing its thing in the corner.
White noise. This is the piece I actually want to spend time on, because it surprised me.
Here's the thing — silence sounds like the goal, but total silence means every little sound stands out hard. Furnace kicking on. Neighbor's car door. Todd getting up to pee at 2am like it's a construction project. A steady, boring sound in the background — a fan, a white noise machine, one of those apps — covers those spikes so your brain doesn't have to keep reacting to them. It's not that white noise puts you to sleep. It's that it makes the room more boring, sound-wise, and boring is what you want.
I use a cheap fan, actually. Not for the airflow, just for the sound. Dean has a proper white noise machine in his room and it's the reason he goes down in eight minutes flat — I mentioned that a few lessons ago and I still think about it. My kid has a better sleep setup than I did for years.
One caution here, genuinely: keep the volume moderate. Loud enough to mask, not loud enough that you're straining or it's actually disruptive itself. There's research on this for babies especially — too loud, too close to the crib, isn't great for developing ears — so if you've got a little one, keep the machine across the room, not right next to the head.
Quick aside, because I got this wrong once. I was sure our elevation up here — we're at about 4,600 feet — was part of why sleep felt off when we first moved. Turns out that's a real thing but it's short-lived: your body adjusts to the altitude within a week or two, and after that it's not really a factor. I had it filed as an ongoing problem for way longer than it actually was one. Worth knowing so you're not chasing the wrong thing for months like I did.
My opinion on this one, stated plainly: most people reach for a supplement or an app before they've done the boring stuff — tape over the LEDs, a cheap fan, less stuff happening in the room. The free changes usually move the needle more than the thing you'd buy. This worked for me. Might not for you, but it's the one I'd start with.
Before next time: pick one glow source in your room tonight — the charger, the cable box, the gap under the door — and kill it. Tape, towel, whatever's cheapest. See if you even notice a difference by the weekend.