Associations between bedroom environment and sleep quality when sleeping less or more than 6h: A cross sectional study during summer

Abstract

A cross-sectional study was conducted in 50 bedrooms in Shanghai, each for one week during summer, to investigate the effects of the bedroom environment on sleep quality. Sleep quality was recorded with a wrist-worn sleep tracker and assessed with a questionnaire. The measurements from 168 person-nights were analysed after excluding unreliable data. The overnight means of bedroom temperature, relative humidity, CO2 and PM2.5 concentrations, which were continuously measured were between 21 to 30 °C, 43 to 86 %, 375 to 2756 ppm, and <1 to 43 μg/m3, respectively. Sleep duration in 36.3 % of the nights was less than 6 h, which is too short according to the recommendation of the American Sleep Foundation. The nights were then classified into two categories, with sleep duration above or below 6 h. The results show that the sleep quality in the short-sleep category was more sensitive to the bedroom environment. In the longer-sleep duration category, light sleep decreased with higher humidity and increased with higher PM2.5 concentration. In the short-sleep duration category, all the main sleep quality parameters including sleep efficiency and the duration and percentage of deep and rapid eye movement sleep stage decreased, and time spent awake increased with increased bedroom temperature, humidity, CO2 and PM2.5 concentration. The occupants who used air conditioning had a lower indoor temperature and humidity at night; opening windows decreased the indoor CO2 concentration but increased the PM2.5 concentration. These results suggest the need for alternative solutions to natural ventilation during summer in dwellings in Shanghai.