Struggling to sleep on the first night away on holiday? Find out how to make your first night in a new location less of a hassle!
This post may contain affiliate links - we receive a small fee from purchases made through these links. For more details, please see our Disclosure Statement.
Collaborative post.
There is a certain cruel irony to travel. You spend your hard-earned money and annual leave to go on holiday somewhere lovely, expecting rest and relaxation.
Then you spend the first two nights lying awake in an unfamiliar room, listening to the lift, the corridor traffic and the mysterious hum of the minibar. The bed is too soft or too firm, the pillows are too high or too low, and the curtains let in a sliver of car park light that somehow lands directly on your face.
In fact, sleeping badly away from home is so common that scientists have a name for it. The ‘first-night effect’ describes the way one half of your brain stays partly alert when you sleep in a new environment. It’s an evolutionary hangover from the days when a strange place might contain something that wanted to eat you.
You can’t switch this reaction off entirely, but luckily, you can take a great deal of the edge off it.
Read on to find out how you can make your first night in a new location less of a hassle.
Recreate your home cues
The brain falls asleep faster when it recognises the signals that mean bedtime. So, the more of your home routine you can carry with you, the quicker you settle.
That means packing the things that anchor your evenings: the book you read before bed, the same pillow spray or hand cream, the podcast you fall asleep to. These small familiarities tell a wary brain that it’s safe to switch off.
It’s a good idea to keep your bedtime roughly consistent with home, too, at least for the first night or two. Staying up until 2am on day one because you are excited or jet-lagged sets a bad pattern that can take the rest of the trip to fix.
Take control of the room
Hotel rooms are designed to look good, not to help you sleep, but a few minutes of preparation can really pay off.
Deal with the light first, by using the trouser clips on the hanger to pin the curtains shut where they gape in the middle. This is a nifty trick beloved by many frequent travellers. You can also drape a towel over the glowing television standby light.
Next, deal with the room temperature. Most people sleep best in a cool room, around 18°C is ideal, and hotels often run far too warm.
Turn the heating down well before bedtime, or open a window if it is safe and quiet enough to do so. If the air conditioning rattles, switch it off and cool the room naturally.
Noise is the last battle. A decent pair of foam earplugs costs almost nothing and transforms your room into a peaceful retreat from the busy street below. Failing that, a white noise app or even the bathroom extractor fan can mask the unpredictable sounds that keep your brain on alert.
The pillow problem
The single most common complaint about hotel sleep is the pillows, and it is easy to see why.
A pillow is a deeply personal thing that moulds itself to the way you lie, but many hotels stock a one-size-fits-nobody compromise. Too high and your neck cranes; too soft and your head sinks until your spine is bent all night. Where’s the Goldilocks pillow that’s just right?
Many hotels keep a pillow menu at reception but don’t advertise it, so it is always worth asking what else they have.
But for serious or frequent travellers, the most reliable fix is to bring your own. That sounds excessive until the first morning you wake without the familiar ache, having slept on a pillow that suits how you sleep rather than whatever the housekeeping cupboard happened to contain.
A compressible travel pillow takes up surprisingly little space. It can make the difference between functioning usefully the next day and shuffling around the city like a ghost.
Mind what you put in your body
There’s a temptation on holiday to lean on wine to relax and coffee to recover. But between them, these two drinks can lead to broken sleep.
Alcohol helps you fall asleep and then fragments the second half of the night, so you wake at four feeling wired. Caffeine lingers in the system for hours, so that post-lunch espresso in a sunny piazza can still be working against you at midnight. Neither needs banning, but timing them sensibly makes a real difference.
A heavy late dinner has a similar effect. Eating large and late, as the local culture often encourages, leaves the body busy digesting when it should be winding down. If you can, eat the bigger meal at lunch and keep the evening lighter.
Give yourself the first night
Perhaps the most useful tip is to expect the first night to be rough and to forgive it.
The pressure to sleep is in itself a reason people lie awake, and accepting that you might toss and turn can paradoxically help you relax. By the second or third night, the unfamiliar has become familiar, the brain stands down, and proper sleep returns.
The many benefits of travel make the disruption worthwhile. A few simple habits, a darkened room, the right pillow and a little patience can turn the hotel bed from an obstacle into just another place to rest.
Hopefully, that will leave you with enough energy to enjoy the reasons you travelled there!