Floor sleeping has become a topic of hot debate in our culture.
Do you get better sleep in a bed and on a mattress?
Or is it possible that you may sleep better if you take a page from our ‘ancestral book’ and sleep directly on the floor?
This is a great question—and to answer it, we decided to ask one of our writers about his experience with spending over a year floor sleeping as an experiment.
Here’s an account of his experiences with a year-long floor sleeping test.
My Experience With A Year Of Floor Sleeping
Looking back on this experience, I can see that there was an appeal to trying something that I saw as being more natural for the human body.
In my mind, beds are kind of gross.
Mattresses can harbor bacteria, moisture, etc.
Plus, you can’t clean them on the inside—and this always struck me as being kind of unsanitary.
So for me, the appeal of sleeping on the floor on a simple pad was as much about cleanliness and sanitation as about back health and overall health and wellness.
When I first started the experiment, it was actually pretty difficult.
I would toss, turn, and wake up feeling pretty sore.
I had to do some experimenting to find a way to build a floor bed that actually worked for me.
What ended up working the best was using a combination of yoga mats, pads, and blankets to give myself a rather soft cushion that was then supported by the firmness of the floor beneath.
At one point, I even used a very thin ‘cot mattress.’
And this actually proved to be pretty comfortable.
Over time, sleeping on the floor became my preferable method of sleep—and I continued to sleep on the floor until I got into a long-term relationship with someone who did not want to join me in the habit.
We ended up getting a king-sized bed—and for the first time in over a year, I transitioned to sleeping in a bed as opposed to on the floor.
When this transition occurred, I noticed an immediate difference in my quality of sleep.
I started waking up with more neck and back pain—and I also noticed that I didn’t sleep as well at night, though this could be attributed to the fact that I was sleeping with another person for the first time in quite a long time.
As a general rule, this experience taught me two things.
First, it takes some time to acclimate to sleeping on the floor.
If you just try it once or twice, you’re probably going to experience a bit of soreness—and you’re not going to sleep well.
But if you stick with it, get used to it, and figure out a sleeping situation on the floor that actually promotes enough comfort, then it’s my opinion that this is actually a superior way to sleep.
Overall, sleeping in a bed tends to yield a poorer night’s rest for me.
I experience more neck pain, more back pain, and just overall don’t sleep as well in a bed as when I sleep on the floor.