Women's Health October 10, 2025 0 Comments

Why Your Sleep Struggles Have Nothing to Do With Your Mattress—And What You’ve Been Overlooking All Along

Ever wonder if the size of your bedroom or how far you drive to work each day could be secretly sabotaging your sleep? Sounds a bit out there, right? But new research out of Tokyo is tossing these everyday factors into the sleep spotlight, revealing how longer commutes and smaller bedrooms might be nudging you toward restless nights and insomnia. It’s not just about tossing and turning—these subtle lifestyle quirks could be impacting your overall health more than you think. So, what’s really going on here? And more importantly, what can you do to flip the script and reclaim those precious Zzzs? Let’s dig into the science, unpack the findings with some expert insights, and figure out how to work with your space and schedule to sleep like a champ. LEARN MORE

New research says that two important lifestyle factors may impact your sleep.
People with longer commutes and smaller bedrooms were more likely to struggle with insomnia.
Here’s how that affects your overall health, and what you can do about it.

There are so many factors that go into how well you sleep at night, from your bedroom set-up to how active you were during the day. But sometimes there are less-obvious variables that can make you a sleep champion or make it harder for you to get your Zzzs.

New research suggests that two unlikely lifestyle elements—the size of your bedroom and the length of your commute—are linked to the amount of time you spend asleep. But this link probably isn’t as cut and dry as it may seem. Here’s what the study discovered, plus what a sleep medicine specialist wants you to keep in mind.

Meet the expert: W. Christopher Winter, MD, a neurologist and sleep medicine physician with Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine and host of the Sleep Unplugged podcast.

What did the study find?

The study, which was published in the Journal of Transport & Health, surveyed more than 1,750 working people living in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Each was asked about their commuting time, housing conditions, and sleep, including whether they had symptoms of insomnia or daytime fatigue.

The researchers discovered that people who had longer commutes were more likely to struggle with insomnia and daytime sleepiness. Those who lived in smaller houses (with bedrooms of 95 meters squared or less) were also more likely to experience insomnia compared to people with roomier homes. The researchers also discovered that having bedrooms of 115 meters squared or higher were “significantly protective” against having insomnia.

How does home size impact sleep?

It’s hard to say. The researchers simply found a link between the two—and that’s important to keep in mind, according to W. Christopher Winter, MD, a neurologist and sleep medicine physician with Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine and host of the Sleep Unplugged podcast. “What we are looking at here is a relationship and not a causal agent,” he says. That means it’s unlikely that the size of your home impacts how well you sleep, but it might suggest something else that could affect your sleep quality, like how much money you make.

Dr. Winter points out that having a higher household income is linked with lower odds of dealing with insomnia and daytime sleepiness. “Bedroom size is a marker of sorts for household income,” he says. “If you make more […] your bedroom is probably pretty spacious.”

How does your commute impact sleep?

There could be a few things at play here, according to Dr. Winter. People with longer commutes likely have “more stress, and less time to exercise and unwind,” he says, noting that those elements can impact sleep. But having a longer commute may also indicate that someone has a lower income and needs to live farther away from work in order to afford their home, Dr. Winter says.

“Higher commutes are often agreed to by people in more need of higher-paying jobs or who need to live out in more affordable neighborhoods,” he says.

Why is sleep important for overall health?

Sleep impacts a range of areas of health. People who get the recommended seven-plus hours of sleep a night get sick less often, tend to maintain a healthy weight, and have a lower risk of chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“It is the foundation for our body to work well and for us to be healthy,” Winter says.

Just don’t stress out about the size of your bedroom directly impacting your sleep quality. This link seems to be more about other things happening in your life and less about the room size itself.

Korin Miller is a freelance writer specializing in general wellness, sexual health and relationships, and lifestyle trends, with work appearing in Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Self, Glamour, and more. She has a master’s degree from American University, lives by the beach, and hopes to own a teacup pig and taco truck one day.