A Case For Leaving Your Bedroom Door Open At Night While Sleeping

It is understandable (and completely normal) to have certain habits when you sleep that just feel good. Keeping your arms and legs from hanging off the bed lest something touch them was a fear ingrained at a young age that follows many through adulthood (horror movie scares never go away). However, some habits, like always closing your bedroom door before bed, could actually be detrimental to your sleep. While monsters are certainly still a concern to some, poor air ventilation can be scarier than anything else that lurks in the dark. Dust particles with nowhere to go can just circulate around your room, adding to poor breathing patterns and affecting your sleep quality. By propping that door open while you get some shut eye, you could be ensuring one of the best night's sleeps you'll ever get.

It should come as no surprise that your bedroom can harbor dust particles and allergens, especially since you go in and out of this space regularly throughout the day. Outside and indoor dander, spores, and even bacteria can move from your clothing and body into the room, circulating as you sleep. You can spend as much time as you want designing the perfect bedroom for a good night's sleep, but if you can't breath properly, all your hard work will go to waste.

When your breathing patterns are thrown off due to allergens and dust, it may affect your sleep cycle and cause you to wake up. Pollutants and allergens are magnified indoors because of your close proximity to them, which is why it's always helpful to choose the right air purifiers to get rid of mold spores and other bacteria. However, leaving your bedroom door open at night can help circulate fresh air into the room, shifting some of these particles out and away from you as you sleep. Keeping a fan on, using a dehumidifier, or even cracking a window will also help push these out through the door, freshening your air for better sleep without congestion.

During the colder months, you can still use the ceiling fan hack you never knew about, which involves reversing the blades to push warmer air around, then prop your bedroom door open and allow this flow to clear out stale air. Whether you close it for that added level of privacy or just out of habit, changing up this small nightly routine could dramatically help your sleep cycle and leave you feeling more refreshed when you wake up. That said, having an open door policy for your bedroom isn't necessarily always a good thing—the Fire Safety Research Institute ran tests determining that, in the event of a fire, it may be safer for your door to be closed.