There’s a growing corner of the internet ditching mattresses to sleep on the floor. Why?

3 months ago 20

If you had asked Arizona-based musician Michelle Moyer three years ago, she would have told you that she absolutely loves her floor bed, and that she sleeps “way better” than she did on her traditional Western bed frame and mattress set-up. She’s not alone.

Fitness and wellness influencer Mike Chang echoed Moyer in March, telling his hundreds of thousands of followers that he had ditched his mattress 10 years ago, and that he had found sleeping on a rug or mattress topper on the floor improves the quality of his family’s sleep and their posture. Two months ago, holistic living creators Cameron & Elijah, who earn a commission when their followers purchase a floor bed set-up through an affiliate link, credited their deeper sleeps and newfound lack of back pain to “sleeping on the floor as a family.”

Japanese-style floor beds, also known as shikibuton, have seen a gradual increase in popularity on social media. But are they really better for you than Western-style sleeping set-ups?

Only time will tell if the drip-feeding of floor-sleeping content on social media is a covert Big Futon advertising operation, a cost-of-living-induced return to minimalism, or otherwise.

Regardless of the motivation, floor-sleeping clearly piques the interest of scrollers: Cameron & Elijah’s video, at the time of publishing, has more than 21.2 million views, significantly more than the couple’s average post. Moyer’s has more than 640,000, and Chang’s series has, combined, more than 165,000 views (a video is generally considered to be viral once it’s surpassed 100,000 views).

But the question amid their testimonies remains: Is ditching your fancy mattress in favour of a no-frills floor set-up actually better for you?

The origins of shikibuton

Referred to by way of hashtags #FloorBeds, #SleepingOnTheFloor or #IntentionalLiving, what Moyer, Chang and Cameron & Elijah are drawing on is something that’s been ingrained in Japanese society since at least 710AD.

A shikibuton” is a foldable, thin mattress, often comprised of layers of cotton, that is designed to be rolled up and stored in a closet after waking, and laid out on the floor before sleeping. Its origins can be traced to the Nara period, when traditional tatami straw mats were put on top of each other for a more comfortable sleep. That eventually morphed into a zabuton-like cushion being put on top of the tatami mat, which is similar to what is practised in Japan and South Korea to this day.

While the specifics of a shikibuton set-up can vary between households, the cultural value of pragmatism and efficiency has never wavered; the storage convenience means a bedroom can be used for other purposes during the day, making it ideal for those who don’t have the luxury of sprawling living space but still need an office, living room and dining room.

Is a shikibuton better for you than Western-style mattresses?

Good news for the stressed and budget-conscious: Professor Simon Smith, who leads the University of Queensland’s Community Sleep Health group at the Child Health Research Centre, says one aspect of shikibuton could help you get a better sleep, though if that’s sleeping on the floor itself is still up for debate.

“If you’re rolling [the futon] up, if you’re sweeping the floor, if you’re making a bit of a routine or a process around sleep, that might actually be a really good thing if you’re spending a bit of time … being mindful about sleep, not just doing it or squeezing it in,” Smith says.

Smith highlights how duration is often the focus of sleep discourse, but that’s “only one part of sleep”. Creating bedtime rituals, as has been trending on social media, is another part that can be beneficial for sleep hygiene.

“We know in kids, for instance, having really good evening routines is great for them. You have a bath, have some reading time, go to bed. And that’s actually all part of the going to sleep process about unwinding, relaxing, getting ready for it,” Smith says.

“If you’re dashing about the place and then just lie down, it’s really, really hard to shift gears. So I think a little bit of focus, not too much, but on the quality of sleep and the sleep processes, it’s probably more important. Whether it’s a futon or a spring mattress or any of those sorts of things. But it’s the behavioural part of it that’s probably pretty positive.”

A shikibuton could also help with what experts know is also good sleep practice: making a bedroom and a bed just for sleeping. But in a world where working from home is common, it can be difficult to separate daytime activities from nighttime activities. Shifting gears by way of unfurling a mattress and packing it up again, Smith says, could help indicate to your subconscious that the “space is no longer [for] awake activities and awake thoughts”.

Smith himself slept on a futon for more than 20 years, a habit that started out of student desperation. Despite his personal preference for a firm sleeping surface, the most he could say about evidence supporting the physical sleep benefits of a shikibuton is that it’s purely anecdotal. Sleep Health Foundation chief executive Dr Moira Junge agrees. She says that after 31 years of immersing herself in the field of sleep, although it’s known that bedroom environment does contribute to good sleep, just how much, exactly, remains unknown.

“I don’t have the particular numbers because the research isn’t there,” Junge says.

Shikibuton has been practised in Japan for more than 1300 years. Many ryokans allow tourists to experience it for the first time.

Sleep-deprived people will do almost anything

Sleep is a crucial pillar of health, like diet and exercise, Junge says, but “we know hardly anything” about it. Demand for information about how to sleep well is clearly propelling posts on social media, but it’s not being met by peer-reviewed studies.

For shikibuton specifically, Junge says, a study would need to monitor a group of people in controlled conditions and then compare that to how they sleep on a futon. It sounds simple, but it’s a resource-heavy exercise that Junge says “no one’s going to fund” and that makes sense considering what good sleep is competing for money against.

“There’s a lot of research in sleep, and we have a sleep research study group, so we do it but a lot of it is firstly on sleep problems because people are first in the queue for that when it goes wrong,” Smith says.

“There are bits and pieces [on positive sleep and cultural aspects of sleep], but it’s not the same depth of research that can make an easy sort of recommendation to people. I think that’s partly because when sleep is fine, it’s unremarkable. We just do it. And when it’s not good, you often seek help.”

Junge says it’s for that reason that research into good sleep also needs to be funded, because with a reliance on subjective anecdotes comes snake oil salesmen.

“If people are desperate, you would spend as many thousands as you had spare or hundreds or whatever, you would spend it on sleep for sure,” Junge says. “People know the value of it once they don’t have it. The first time you value it the most is when you actually don’t get the sleep.”

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