Can’t sleep? Mattresses, masks and supplements say they can help.
Every time I open Instagram these days, every other ad is for a sleep-related product. There are mattresses, sheets, fancy earplugs, alarm clocks and high-tech masks that lull you to sleep with white noise and wake you up gently with light, pitches for supplements, patches and sleep tests you can take at home.
As someone who has never been a good sleeper, I am always both skeptical of and tempted by products that promise better sleep. And every day, it feels like, there are more of them.
“The industry itself is huge, as you might expect,” said Tom Ryan, a director of product testing at SleepFoundation.org, a sleep information website.
Mattresses alone are a roughly $50 billion global market, according to Ryan. Sleep aids and supplements? Roughly $80 billion. Sleep tech — things like smartwatches, apps and other tools designed to track or improve sleep — $13 billion. All are growing.
“There’s a lot of interest and certainly a lot of money flowing towards the sleep economy,” Ryan said.
About a third of U.S. adults regularly get insufficient sleep, or less than seven hours a night, and about two-thirds aren’t getting deep, “restorative” sleep. One study from the Rand Corp. found that costs the U.S. economy $411 billion a year. Another found people would be willing to spend up to 14% of their income a year to get better sleep.
Depending on who you are, “sleep is a big issue or a big opportunity,” said Andrew Csicsila, consumer products practice lead for North America with AlixPartners. “Consumers are eager for a panacea to deal with sleep issues, and the consumer products and retail industry understands this very well and are actively targeting this group.”
For anyone considering buying products that claim to improve sleep, “the first question to ask is, ‘Are these based in data or evidence?’ Especially when they’re making claims around sleep quality,” said John Lopos, CEO of the nonprofit National Sleep Foundation. “It’s important that consumers are looking at the evidence behind some of the claims.”
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month, more than two dozen companies showed off various kinds of sleep tech. Everything from a wearable sleep mask with LED lights designed to help you shift your sleep schedule to a smart bed with health sensors in the frame to track things like your heart rate. If you start snoring, it will detect it — and elevate your head.
“We’re seeing this ecosystem really continue to expand,” said Anna Pione, a partner at McKinsey. “Sleep has gone through a bit of a renaissance in the last five or 10 years. It used to be almost like a bragging point to say, ‘I only need four hours of sleep.’ Where now it’s much more common to hear people recognizing the importance of sleep in their overall health, mindfulness, energy levels, stress levels.”
That’s something Wendy Troxel, a clinical psychologist and sleep expert at Rand, has noticed too.
“There’s more and more recognition that sleep is vital,” she said. For physical and mental health and for productivity and performance at work too.
There are certain things worth spending money on, particularly to improve your sleep environment, she said. “Things like having good bedding and a good mattress. These things absolutely matter.”
But beyond that, if you’re struggling to fall asleep or stay asleep, Troxel said, “my first suggestion is turn inwards, focus on your own behaviors first, because that is likely to have the largest impact on your sleep quality.”
It’s not really a problem you can buy your way out of. Though that’s not likely to stop sleep-deprived people — like me — from trying.