How much control do we have over our sleep environment? We might be able to pick the best mattress and best pillow, but when it comes to disruptive nighttime noises, we often have to put up with whatever our local environment wants to deliver. If I could dictate my sleep soundscape, I would get the Alaskan Malamute that lives next door not to howl mournfully between 12am and 7am.
But just because we can't put a stop to ambient noise, it doesn't mean we can't take some control over what we hear at night. A survey commissioned by hotel chain Premier Inn found that 50 per cent of people use white noise to fall asleep at least some of the time, with 26 per cent listening to it every night. And it turns out we're all dreaming of rainy evenings, with 40 per cent of white noise listeners picking rainfall as their top soothing sound.
