Science Says Sleeping in a Really Dark Room Will Make You Smarter
The darker the room tonight, the smarter and more alert you’ll be tomorrow.
You probably already know you need at least seven hours of sleep a night to function at your best. (And don’t say, “Not me. I do just fine on five or six hours.” According to a study published in Cell Research, only a tiny fraction of the population functions well on less than seven hours.)
Why? A 2018 study published in Sleep says if you only sleep for five to six hours you’re 19 percent less productive than people who regularly sleep for seven to eight hours. If you only sleep five hours a night? You’re nearly 30 percent less productive.
That’s especially true for entrepreneurs: A study published in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice found that lack of sleep makes people more likely to start a business on impulse or whim rather than on a solid, well-considered idea. More broadly, a study published in Journal of Business Venturing found that lack of sleep causes you to come up with worse ideas.
And to believe your bad ideas are actually good ideas.
So, yeah: Getting enough sleep is actually a competitive advantage.
Especially if you take it one step further. According to a 2022 study published in Sleep, sleeping in as close to total darkness as possible can not only improve the quality of your sleep, it can also improve your memory and alertness.
After just two nights of wearing a sleep mask, participants:
- Displayed significantly better learning skills
- Displayed significantly better physical reaction times
- Learned new motor skills more quickly
Why? One explanation could be the “synaptic homeostasis hypothesis,” the theory that increased slow-wave activity during sleep (which is promoted by darkness) promotes the “down-scaling” of synapses that became saturated while you were awake and restores your capacity for encoding new information.
Or, in non-researcher-speak, a dark night’s sleep primes both your cognitive and motor skills for the next day. The same holds true for feeling (and actually being) more alert.
That doesn’t mean I’m eager to embrace a sleep mask. It feels weird to have a mask on, and it made me feel like I didn’t sleep as well. But I’m probably wrong; as the researchers write:
It deserves mention that even though participants reported that sleeping with the control mask was more uncomfortable in comparison with the eye mask, this did not impact self-reported sleep quality, morning alertness, or sleep parameters.
So even if you don’t love the idea of a mask, the mask will still — in terms of the benefits it provides — love you back.
But you don’t have to wear a mask. Draw your blinds. Consider room-darkening curtains. Turn off device notifications and leave them face-down on your nightstand. The darker you make your bedroom — the more you limit the presence of ambient or intermittent light that can disturb your sleep — the more you’ll benefit in terms of memory performance and alertness the next day.
As the researchers write:
Given the current climate of life-hacking, sleep monitoring, and cognitive enhancers, our findings suggest the eye mask as a simple, economical, and noninvasive way to get more out of a night of sleep.
Source: https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/science-says-sleeping-in-a-really-dark-room-will-make-you-smarter/91269306 (25/11/2025)
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