A good sleep is essential to having a happy and productive life. We spend a third of our life sleeping, making it the biggest single activity in our lives. We need sleep to revitalise our brains and function properly during the day, and poor sleepers are more likely to suffer from mood and concentration problems. Yet still many of us fail to get the right length and quality of sleep we need, despite the range of sleep tech and apps now available.

In a busy modern world, it can start to seem like there just aren’t enough hours in the day and daily stresses can quickly become a burden. That makes getting a good sleep more important than ever, but also more difficult. From physical factors such as noise and light to pesky persistent thoughts, trying to sleep can become a frustration.

Fortunately, the same modern world causing various stresses might also provide the answer. As well as employing natural clean sleeping techniques you can also find plenty of technology and apps out there to help aid your sleep and monitor results. We’ve put together a list of our favourites for you to get started, but there are plenty of others out there. Sweet dreams!

Take a deep breath

Our first favourite gadget aims at helping you to beat one of the biggest roadblocks to sleep: your mind. Agitated thoughts and general stress can significantly disturb your ability to fall asleep. While the 2breathe can’t control your actual thoughts, it does help you to use soothing breathing exercises to make falling asleep a whole lot easier.

Breathing exercises have long been a widely-approved method of calming your mind and body, both of which are important for good sleep. The 2breathe uses a belt and your smartphone to track your breathing and produces tones that gradually guide you into the prolonged slow breathing needed to drift off. After a few pre-sleep sync sessions you’re good to use the in-bed mode with your 2breathe, plus continue to track and review your sleep after with a sleep diary, tips and tutorials.

Keep a cool head

Your physical environment is just as important when it comes to a good sleep, and temperature continues to be a persistent disturbance for many. Heat blankets and special cooling memory foams have risen in popularity as we all struggle to find that perfect temperature. Now you can also try resting your head on a Moona pillow.

If you’ve ever tossed and turned and flipped your pillow more times than you can count getting to the cool side, then the Moona pillow might just be the pillow of your dreams. Based on the science that we need our body temperature to decrease to fall asleep soundly and to increase again to wake up properly for the day, the Moona pillow aims to regulate your temperature for truly restorative sleep. This clever pillow cools down as you fall asleep, tracks and enhances with your sleeping pattern, and then warms up gently in the morning.

Look to the light

Along with temperature, light is a key physical factor to take into consideration when it’s time to sleep. Most scientists suggest complete darkness at bedtime and while blackout blinds should still be on your shopping list, the Nox light now provides a little extra sleep tech to aid your sleep.

Combining a soft light and soothing sound, the Nox light aims to help you drift off quickly and peacefully. The light technology has been designed to produce red wavelengths that help raise the secretion of melatonin while calming sounds soothe you into sleep. The light and sound programs adapt to your personal clock for a truly tailored sleep regime.

It’s not all about the sleep, though. The Sleepace App uses the special tracking technology from Nox to monitor and determine your sleep cycle. The Nox smart alarm will then wake you up at the lightest part of your sleep within a 30-minute window prior to the time you set. Rather than feeling groggy from a deep sleep, you can wake up refreshed.

The Sleepace App will also track your body movement and other aspects of your sleep cycle to provide you with detailed sleep analysis. See the quality of your sleep each night and get personalised daily reminders to improve your sleep habits. The Nox sensor will also monitor your sleep environment including temperature, humidity, ambient light and noise to combine with your Sleepace App data and improve your sleep quality.

Time to track

Instead of investing in a gadget, why not try a free sleep tech app? Sleepbot offers three distinctive sleep features to help you track and improve your sleep; a motion tracker, a sound recorder and a smart alarm. You can select which of these to use, whether it’s one or all three, for a more customised experience. Simply place the phone on the bed near your body and it will track your movement, record sounds and even record clips to get an even better idea of all your nighttime intrusions.

After recording your sleep activities, you can use easy interactive graphs showing details of your sleep cycle with light and deep sleep, sleep times and wake times going back 6 months. You can use all of this data to monitor and improve your sleep, and Sleepbot even comes with a smart alarm just like Nox to wake you up during a light sleep.

A little extra app

If you’re not impressed by any of our favourite sleep tech gadgets or think they might be a little out of your price range, you can also try one of the hundreds of sleep aid apps available. There are plenty of amazing sleep and insomnia apps to try. From meditation apps to teach you calming breathing techniques, to soothing nature sounds, you can find an app for almost every sleep ailment out there. Our personal favourites are soothing meditation apps which can be just as helpful with everyday stresses and anxiety.

Of course, you can also get a little additional help by getting your bedroom environment completely perfect for sleep. Our super soft bedding and blackout blinds are just the thing to encourage a peaceful slumber.