Total darkness in the room is paramount for a decent night’s sleep.

This will allow your sleepy hormone – melatonin – to be released.

Melatonin needs to be released in order to actually get you off to sleep, but it also helps keeps your immune system in check.

A sleeping mask is the perfect way to keep the room in total darkness, particularly if there’s light from a street light outside, the gap at the bottom of the door, or if we have to endure those long summer nights.

Whenever I am in France Italy or Spain not only do they have the most amazing black out blinds but I get the most amazing night’s sleep too. Back at home you could consider buying some good quality black out blinds. But make sure that they go all the way up to the edge.

In the event that you do need to get up to go to the toilet in the night, do make sure that you don’t turn any lights on, use a low level ‘plug-in’ light as this will cease the production of your sleepy hormone and prevent you from getting back to sleep.