Here at Ted Todd, health and well-being is of the utmost importance to us. scooms, makers of the best environmentally friendly and sustainably sourced duvets, pillows and bed linens, have the same values and ethos as us: they’re strong proponents of natural materials in the home, and only source materials that are ethical and sustainably sourced. We’ve been able to pair up with them to offer the chance to win a scooms 9 tog Hungarian goose down duvet – read on to find out how!
We all know that getting a proper night’s rest is good for us – it lets our body and mind recharge, and helps us to concentrate, think clearly, and process memories.
We sat down with Emily and Jonathan Attwood, co-founder of scooms, to find out how to get the best night’s sleep, as well as why they believe, as we do, that using natural materials in the home is the way forward.
“When we moved back to Surrey from California a few years ago with our young family, we needed a whole set of new bedding – duvets, pillows and bed linen. We thought it would be a straightforward search online but frustratingly it proved to be the opposite, with a multitude of choices and claims that made it impossible to work out which bedding was best.” says Emily.
“So, we decided to create our own amazing quality bedding that would provide the best night’s sleep and have all the other key elements we wanted including being made from natural materials and suitable for dust mite allergy sufferers as I’m allergic to dust mites”, she continues.
Regular, good quality sleep is one of the three essentials for a healthy lifestyle, along with nutrition and exercise. While you’re asleep your body is hard at work healing itself and optimising different processes including healing damaged cells, boosting your immune system and recharging your heart and cardiovascular system for the next day. Resulting in better physical and mental health when you wake up in the morning!
There are some ways to improve your sleep that are often talked about, such as making sure you aren’t looking at the blue light from your phone too close to bedtime, practicing a ‘winding down’ routine in the hour before bed, and trying to alleviate stress where possible.
Emily and Jonathan recommend:
• Keep a consistent sleep/wake schedule.
• Set an alarm to go to bed.
• Resist the urge to hit the snooze button.
• Go for a walk in the morning.
• Get regular exercise each day.
• Set the right sleep temperature for your bedroom, around 18C.
• Develop a bedtime routine.
• Don’t drink caffeine or alcohol before bed.
Another important thing to do is to optimise your sleeping space. As well as making sure your bedroom is at the perfect temperature, as we mentioned above, using natural materials can also be really important. All our wood floors are natural and so are hypoallergenic, can improve indoor air quality and are a natural insulator.
We quizzed Emily and Jonathan on why sustainably sourced natural materials are the best choice for the home, and particularly when it comes to the bedroom:
When it comes to natural materials, how are they more beneficial for our health and wellbeing as opposed to their synthetic counterparts?
Natural goose down duvets and pillows requires less energy to produce than synthetic duvets and are also biodegradable. The very fine, synthetic fibres in synthetic duvets such as Microfibre, Hollowfibre or Soft As Down are a form of plastic. These microfibres are a major source of pollution. Like other micro-plastics, they can enter our rivers, seas and land food chains, as well as being present in the air we breathe.
Our bedding is made from natural, biodegradable materials. And we don’t use any unnecessary single use plastics in our packaging.
You only source ethically and sustainably sourced materials – why is this such a crucial part of your ethos and offering?
It was very important to us from the out-set that our bedding range would be planet-friendly. We wanted to create our ideal environmentally friendly and sustainably sourced duvet, pillow and bed linen set. Our goose down and feathers are a by-product of the food industry and responsibly sourced, traceable and rigorously tested, adhering to the Responsible Down Standard, and only washed in spring water without the use of harsh chemicals.
And we’re absolutely committed to plastic-free packaging. Our bedding is delivered in a reusable material bag inside a cardboard box.
Proper certification to prove the sustainable origins of the materials are as important to scooms as they are to us. Within the UK, all wood flooring being imported must be UKTR certified, but we also like to go one step further and build in FSC or PEFC certification.
What certifications are available for your goose down duvets and pillows, and why was this certification so important to you when you designed your range?
It’s important to most of us that the products we use on a daily basis don’t affect either our health or the environment. We spend a third of our lives in bed, so it is worthwhile ensuring that our bedding is free from harmful chemicals and comes with the top industry standards like Oeko-Tex 100.
Plastics and hidden chemicals can affect our health and are just as bad for the environment.
Finally, we asked Emily more about how she gets the best night’s sleep, plus what’s next for scooms.
What is your bedroom design style?
We love the Scandinavian bedroom style. Our bedroom has a muted, natural colour palette of white and grey giving the whole room a light and fresh feel. The curtains with a red poppy design add a ‘pop’ of interesting colour.
We keep our bedroom clutter and electronics free to create a relaxing atmosphere that helps us to unwind at the end of a long day at scooms!
What are the top 3 things that you need to have every night to get the best sleep possible?
To get the best night’s sleep, I find that routine is key. I try to go to bed and get up at roughly the same time every day. I need my scooms Hungarian goose down duvet in the right tog for the season so that I have the ideal body temperature to easily drift off to sleep. We don’t have black out curtains, so I always sleep in my Mulberry silk eye mask to block out the light and prevent being woken up before I’ve had my essential 8 hours of sleep!
What does the future hold for scooms?
We are on a mission to help everyone get a better night’s sleep by providing more and more people with simply the best natural duvet, pillow and bed linen range!
WIN a scooms 9 tog Hungarian goose down duvet, perfect as we transition into the autumn months.
To enter, all you need to do is FOLLOW both @tedtoddfloors and @scoomssleep on Instagram, LIKE the competition post on our Instagram page, and TAG one friend in the comments!
T&Cs apply. Competition ends 31st August 2021. Winner will be randomly chosen from all valid entries by scooms. The winner will be contacted by message on Instagram from scooms official Instagram page, @scoomssleep. The winner will be able to choose which size 9 tog duvet they would like and it will be sent direct from scooms to the winner. If the winner does not respond to scooms message within a reasonable amount of time then another winner will be chosen.