The Best Scents for A Good Night's Sleep
After a stressful day, few things in life can be as rejuvenating and energizing as a restful night’s sleep. While fluffy pillows, pristine white sheets, cotton quilts, and a pitch-dark bedroom can help you drift off with ease, there’s one often overlooked, easy, and inexpensive tool you can add to your nightly routine. Wondering what they are? Scents!
Humans have used scents as sleep inducers and dream enhancers for thousands of years. Aromatherapy has proven benefits that include reduced anxiety and increased sleep quality.
If you’re someone who struggles to fall asleep at night, here’s a list of therapeutic scents to help you have a good night’s rest.
10 Best Scents That Can Help You Sleep
Lavender
The most popular among all sleep-inducing scents, lavender is a perennial flowering plant well-known for its delicate yet pronounced floral scent, antiseptic, and anti-inflammatory properties.
It’s often used as a sleep remedy to promote deep sleep. Studies prove that lavender scents can help combat depression and anxiety, reduce agitation, improve sleep quality, increase daytime alertness, and boost concentration.
Full of calming qualities, the scent of lavender can help slow down your nervous system and aids in relaxing your body while preparing it for a good night’s rest. You can use this soothing scent with various aromatherapy methods, from putting it in a diffuser, burning a bedside candle, or hanging lavender sachets in your room.
Clary Sage
If you find yourself constantly tossing and turning at night due to physical and mental discomfort, the scent of clary sage can be an excellent remedy. Effective for combating restlessness, studies have shown that inhaling its scent can give you a sense of peace and focus while helping you overcome relentless mental activity. Besides putting you into a deep, restful slumber, its calming effect can make it easier to get through the day with less stress.
Lemon
Lemon is another perennial plant offering a calming effect on the mind while enhancing creativity. If you suffer from chronic sleep disorders, diffusing a lemon scent in your room or sipping lemon tea can help reduce stress, anxiety, depression, ease physical anxiety and pains while promoting restful sleep.
Rose
A perfect scent to help your body wind down after a tedious day, rose’s delicate floral fragrance can help calm your nervous system and improve your sleep quality.
While one research states that naturally relaxing rose scents can help relieve stress levels, another study suggests rose scents can help improve learning and memory during sleep.
The floral rose scent acts as a sedative and helps promote sleep while reducing stress and anxiety. If you have a big presentation coming up, try placing a rose bouquet by your bed to soothe your nerves and remember key points better.
Vanilla
If the smell of warm baked cookies relaxes you, recreating the fragrance in your bedroom with a vanilla-scented candle can be great for a relaxing night of sleep minus the calories!
One of the most appealing scents worldwide, vanilla not only smells delicious but has immense sleep-inducing benefits. It has tranquilizing qualities, helps lower blood pressure, promotes feelings of wellbeing, reduces hyperactivity, and acts as an anti-depressant for stress relief and relaxation.
This soothing scent is available in many forms from oils, candles, creams, room mists, bath salts, and more. Before getting under the sheets, treat yourself to a long, warm vanilla-scented bubble bath for a restful night of sleep.
Bergamot
Bergamot is an orange citrus fruit that helps reduce blood pressure, slows heart rate, and prepares your body for sleep with its calming effects. It’s also proven to reduce mental activity and anxiety, making it an excellent remedy for insomnia.
To incorporate bergamot into your bedtime routine, squeeze a few drops of essential oil into a steaming pot and get ready for a peaceful slumber.
Sandalwood
Due to its excellent mood-balancing properties, sandalwood helps promote deep rest and evens you out emotionally to help you relax and unwind.
The highly inviting, rich, earthy, and woody scent of sandalwood has immense sleep-promoting qualities. Research shows that sandalwood has highly sedating effects, helps ease anxiety symptoms, reduces wakefulness, and increases the amount of deep wave sleep.
Its warm smell can also help people who suffer from colds and allergies since it eases sleep disturbances and encourages deeper sleep.
Jasmine
Are you a light sleeper? Do you constantly toss and turn during the night and are unable to relax your body? Jasmine can be the perfect scent to put you in a state of restful sleep.
This delicate white-petaled plant has several sleep benefits as it offers a calming sedative effect, thus encouraging deeper sleep and minimizing your movement at night.
Studies have found that even small hints of jasmine in the air can put you in a deep slumber and increase your alertness during the day.
Get a jasmine-scented spray, freshen up your sheets and pillows, and settle in for a good night’s rest.
Frankincense
A fragrant resin found in trees, people use frankincense as a relaxing agent to promote restful sleep and quiet the mind. With its sweet, woody, earthy, and slightly fruity scent, frankincense helps soothe sensitive nerves, calms your breath, lowers anxiety levels, and helps your body reach an ideal sleeping temperature by opening your airways.
Its anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving properties also help combat the physical stress brought on by anxiety.
Chamomile
A popular medicinal herb and a common ingredient in relaxing infusions and teas, chamomile has been used for centuries for its various health benefits.
Its scent has sleep-inducing properties that can help you feel calmer and more relaxed. Recent studies have proven that the scent of Roman chamomile is ideal for warding off anxiety and has the potential to reduce nightmares and improve sleep quality.
Chamomile also has anti-inflammatory and anti-spasmodic properties that help comfort your nervous system, ease muscle stiffness, reduce daytime fatigue, and promote sleep while reducing insomnia at night.
Peppermint
Peppermint has been long been used for its various benefits. As aromatherapy, it’s often used to aid a night of peaceful and satisfying sleep. Infused with calming and relaxing qualities, its pleasant aroma helps clear your head and promotes ease and restfulness. It’s also known to offer relief from seasonal allergies and dust sensitivities.
Rosemary
Although rosemary is popularly known as a culinary herb, its benefits stretch beyond the kitchen. Its woodsy fragrance is considered a mainstay in aromatherapy. Studies prove that its scent can help you feel refreshed, boost mood, improve brain activity, and soothe the nervous system to promote restful sleep.
Research also shows that inhaling its scent can relieve anxiety and stress by lowering the cortisol level in the body.
How Does Smell Affect Your Body?
Certain fragrances can help create a positive physical change in your body by lowering your heart rate and decreasing blood pressure which can help you relax and unwind.
This change can be extremely useful when incorporated into a nighttime routine because it can help you drift into a peaceful state and induce restful sleep.
Tips for Using Scents for Sleep and Relaxation
Get the most from your aromatherapy scents by keeping the following tips in mind:
Add Essential Oils to Your Bath
One of the best ways to get the most benefits from your aromatherapy is by adding scented oils to your bath. Add a few or as many drops as you want and have a relaxing soak before bedtime.
Use A Diffuser
Diffusers are another great way to enjoy your favorite scents. Using materials like reeds, diffusers allow scents to be dispersed into the air. All you need to do is fill the diffuser with a blend of oil and water.
Make Your Own Spray
Fill an atomizer or a spray bottle with water and essential oil to get an instant air freshener! You can also spray a light mist on your bed linens or the underside of your pillow to enjoy the scent as you drift into sleep.
Use Scented Candles
A candle with subtle scents by your bedside can help you calm down and snuggle up for a cozy, warm night. Enjoy the scent as you lie down in bed, read a good book, and prepare for bedtime.
Apply Directly to Your Body
Applying scented essential oils to pressure points like your wrists and behind the ears is another great way to derive the benefits of the se sleep-inducing scents. However, make sure to dilute essential oils before applying them to your skin since undiluted essential oils can cause skin irritation.
All Set for a Good Night of Sleep
The next time you find yourself tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep, you know what to do!
While scents help you unwind and fall asleep, you should combine them with comfortable bedding to create a more restful and relaxing environment.
Southshore Fine Linens sells a wide range of quality bedding to meet all your sleep preferences and needs.
Choose from our stylish and comfortable selections. We have beddings in double brushed microfiber, cotton percale, cotton sateen, and 100% viscose bamboo bedding. With our range of luxurious yet affordable choices, Southshore Fine Linens ensures that your bed is as restful and comfortable as possible.
