Should You Really Have a TV in Your Bedroom? Or Is It Bad for Sleep?
Since the beginning of time, humans have used different methods to lull themselves to sleep. From reading by candlelight to playing an ambient noise machine, getting into the right headspace to drift off to sleep is key to achieving the recommended 8 hours.
Now, it’s true some sleep methods are better than others. For instance, you should not expose your eyes to the blue light of your phone or computer screen as you’re trying to wind down for the night. But this begs the question, should you have a TV in your bedroom and watch it before bed?
Find out more about how TV before bed can affect your quality of sleep and whether or not you should place a TV in your bedroom.
The Pros and Cons to Having a TV in Your Room
It may come as a surprise, but having a TV in your room comes with both advantages and disadvantages. Whether some of these advantages are actually cons and vice versa are up to you, but it is wise to take all the factors into consideration before you decide if you should have a TV in your bedroom.
Disadvantages of Having a TV in Your Room
We’ll save the best for last and start with some of the obvious disadvantages of having a TV in your bedroom. For one, it’s well-documented, at this point, that watching TV before bed can disrupt your sleep.
If you fall asleep to the white noise of your favorite television show or sports game, studies have shown that insomnia is more likely to disrupt your late nights. What’s more, TV stimulates the mind and having this type of brain activity can cause vivid dreams, disrupting sleep again.
But light isn’t the only contributing factor. Because the noise from TV shows and movies can fluctuate, your sleep is likely to be interrupted. When that happens, cognitive function is lessened throughout the day. This means that your mental acumen is not as sharp or clear as it can be if you did not have a TV in your bedroom.
One could argue that you can still watch TV too close to bedtime if your TV is in the living room. This is true. However, the short transition time between shutting off the TV in your living room and getting ready for bed is a critical period for your mind to wind down. You can even assist the process further by dimming lights or using light bulbs that cast a warm light to simulate the sun going down, which brings us to another disadvantage.
Often, the bright artificial light of a television screen playing in a dark room can have a poor impact on circadian rhythms. This can then disrupt your melatonin levels and cause you to take a long time to fall asleep and have trouble staying asleep.
Advantages of Having a TV in Your Room
If you already have a TV in your room, you might be wondering if you should watch TV before bed. Well, we’re happy to say, you do not need to go out and rip your TV off the bedroom wall - there are actually some benefits to having a TV in your bedroom.
For one, watching TV is a popular way to de-stress after a long day. Lives are often full of stressors and one way to relax is to watch TV while in bed. Meanwhile, other people prefer to have a TV on — usually at the lowest volume — for a bit of white noise instead of a ceiling fan or white noise machine.
If you are interested in having a TV situated in your bedroom, be mindful of how high the TV is mounted as you would most likely be laying down or in an otherwise relaxed position instead of sitting completely upright. Also, keep in mind that a bed is often in a higher fixed position than a couch so the right mount would be needed for optimal viewing.
Mounting a TV in Your Bedroom
If you decide to put a TV in your bedroom, there are a couple of things in terms of TV height and distance from the bed that you should consider. MantelMount has a useful guide for choosing the right-sized TV for the size of your room and how far away to place your furniture.
Although we can’t tell you definitively whether or not you should put a TV in your bedroom, if you decide to mount a TV in your bedroom, MantelMount pull down wall mounts can provide you with the best TV-viewing experience before your head hits the pillow and it’s lights out.
Due to its patented construction combining high-quality automotive pistons with lightweight alloys and state-of-the-art counterbalance technology, you can easily pull down a large flat screen TV off the wall with a MantelMount wall mount (like the most popular model, the MM540 Enhanced Pull Down), suspend it at eye-level, swivel it left or right, and then simply raise if back up to the stowed position when not watching, if you so choose.
Contact our friendly installers to learn about the installation process and to discover which world-class wall mount and TV accessories are right for your set up in whichever room that might be.