There are few greater pleasures than slipping under soft, clean sheets for a good night’s sleep. However, there’s a good chance that you’re making a major mistake when it comes to your bedding—and, subsequently, your hygiene.
If you're clocking the recommended hours of sleep per night, that means you spend between 49 and 63 hours in bed each week. During that time, your bedding accumulates sweat, dirt, dust mites, dead skin cells, and more. Though a study found that Americans only change their sheets once every 24 days on average, experts say that washing once a week is ideal for ridding your bedding of bacterial buildup.
“I know it seems like a lot of work, but trust me: It’s worth it unless you want to marinate in a petri dish full of grossness,” Jason Singh, MD, a primary care doctor and medical content creator, said in a recent TikTok post.
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Here's what's really living on your sheets.
Singh explains that dead skin cells and body oils produce food for dust mites, microscopic bugs that live in bedding.
“Dust mites and their waste can then trigger an allergic reaction or asthma in susceptible people. Fungal organisms like yeast and mold can also ruin your bed sheets, especially if they’re damp from sweat. This creates an environment that can lead to skin infections and smells that will have you gagging,” he says.
If that doesn’t convince you to stop everything and strip the bed, The Sleep Council estimates that “as much as a tenth of the weight of a pillow that has never been washed is made up of human skin scales, mold, dust mites (including dead dust mites) and their droppings”—a truly harrowing thought.
The Sleep Foundation illustrates just how bad things can get when you fail to wash your sheets often enough: "Dust mites can reproduce at prolific rates. At any given time, there can be tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of dust mites living in your mattress and bedding. Even if you're not allergic to dust mites, you probably don't want to be sharing your bed with thousands of them.”
According to Mayo Clinic, if you do have a dust mite allergy, you may notice symptoms similar to hay fever, such as sneezing and runny nose. “Many people with dust mite allergy also experience signs of asthma, such as wheezing and difficulty breathing.”
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This is the best way to wash your sheets.
Home and cleaning expert @neat.caroline agrees that you should wash your sheets weekly. She recommends checking the care label first but notes that cotton and linen can handle hot temperatures. Water that’s at least 140 degrees should kill dust mites, allergens, and bacteria. She then advises drying your sheets on low heat to reduce unnecessary wear.
Home expert, author, and content creator Barbara “Babs” Costello, adds that if your sheets look dingy and dull, you can “lighten and brighten them the natural way.”
To get started, load your washer and add a half a cup of baking soda to your machine’s automatic detergent dispenser, she suggests. Then, add a half cup of white vinegar to your automatic fabric softener dispenser if you have one. If not, you can simply stop your washer before the rinse cycle begins and manually add your white vinegar.
“Make sure you set the water temperature to the very highest setting,” Costello advises in a TikTok post. “These sheets are whiter, brighter, and smell so much better,” she adds, admiring the finished product.
With a little extra effort, you can ensure that your bed is clean and pristine—and that could help you sleep better at night.
