Bedroom IEQ, Sleep Quality and Energy Efficiency

Sleep is crucial for human health and well-being. Poor sleep quality is related to both adverse health outcomes (such as obesity and chronic diseases) and economic burden due to decreased work productivity, occupational accidents and absenteeism. We spend about a third of our lifetime in bedrooms. During sleep, we are unconsciously exposed to the bedroom environment for extended periods. Bedroom indoor environmental quality (IEQ) is thus vital for our sleep quality and health. Unlike during the awake state in most other indoor environments, we are "passive participants" during sleep and have no ability to actively manipulate the bedroom IEQ if our sleep is disturbed. Most existing standards and building regulations do not stipulate specific IEQ requirements for bedrooms. Although limited, recent studies suggest that the IEQ requirements for awake people are inappropriate as reference levels during sleep. This requires further research, particularly in the context of rapid urbanisation, climate change, the warming planet and worsening outdoor pollution.

This Research Topic on "Bedroom IEQ, sleep quality and energy efficiency" focuses on the emerging need to learn more about bedroom IEQ conducive to sleep quality and how to achieve it in an energy-efficient manner. It aims to bring together cutting-edge research from different disciplines that (1) characterize bedroom IEQ in different climate zones, (2) identify factors related to the environment that affect sleep quality, (3) elaborate mechanisms on how bedroom IEQ affects sleep quality, especially related to the definition of trigger levels for observed effects, (4) investigate the unique IEQ requirements in bedrooms for sleep in general and beyond (i.e., climate change), (5) explore and develop technologies to sense and improve bedroom IEQ with less energy use. The broad readers can be updated on the current developments in bedroom IEQ and sleep quality with regard to health effects, energy consumption, and technological solutions, which will pave the path to establishing healthy and energy-efficient bedrooms for people.

This Research Topic seeks high-quality and original contributions that cover a wide range of themes related to the intersection of health and energy efficiency in bedrooms, containing fundamental and applied research, case studies/CFD and energy simulations or state-of-the-art work that present new insights, innovative approaches, frameworks, ideas and solutions to address bedroom IEQ and sleep quality issues. Research themes include, but are not limited to:
• Sleep disturbance in healthy subjects;
• Sleep quality among the vulnerable population, i.e., the elderly and children;
• Thermal comfort and thermal physiology;
• Ventilation and indoor air quality;
• Acoustic comfort;
• Visual comfort;
• Health outcomes and productivity;
• Behaviour, cognition and sleep;
• Long-term impact of sleep patterns;
• Smart sleep quality monitoring;
• Bedroom retrofitting and smart technological solutions;
• Climate change and extreme heat events;
• Energy consumption.

Keywords: Bedroom environmental quality, Sleep quality, Health outcomes, Productivity, Energy efficiency

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.