The beauty of the world lies in the various cultures, each with its own features, such as food and clothing. However, without venturing outside the world you live in, you’d never know of them. For instance, unless you immerse yourself in another culture, you may never realize just how different their beds and mattresses may be.
Some cultures boast the largest mattress sizes, while others use thin mattresses that are rolled away during the day to save space; these differences in mattresses often match the sleep needs of the area and can reflect the culture where they are used.
Mattresses Around the World
While we are all driven by the same basic needs of food, sleep, and socialization, there is considerable variety in how each culture fulfills these needs. The fact that each culture has specific food and social activities likely comes as no surprise, but you may be shocked to learn that sleeping habits, specifically what people sleep on, can vary from culture to culture, as well.
The following are 8 ways in which beds and mattresses vary around the world.
One Bed, Two Duvets
The struggle of sharing a bed with a partner only for them to hog the blankets all night is universal, but the Scandinavians have a solution to this problem—they use two duvets on a single bed so that each person has their own. Thanks to this methodology, no one is left shivering in the middle of the night, trying to drag the blanket out from underneath the other.
As an added benefit, using separate blankets means that each person can modify the blankets to meet their needs. For instance, if one person gets cold at night while the other doesn’t, they can use a thicker blanket, and their partner can remain comfortable.
Adding Some Netting
In some African countries, you may find that the beds come with netting adornments, which serve a very important purpose—keeping out mosquitos that otherwise can carry life-threatening diseases such as malaria. With mosquitoes increasing in activity during the night, using a mosquito net allows those in African countries to remain safe while they snooze.
Individualized Mattresses
Those in Germany often use two smaller beds instead of one larger one, with each person having their own bed. The beds may have a small gap between them, or they may be combined into one larger bed frame. The benefit of the two mattresses, though, is that each person can have a mattress meeting their firmness needs.
Bigger is Better
While those in Germany each use a small bed, in North America, mattresses have become bigger and bigger—sometimes triple the size of beds used in other countries. These large mattress sizes come with benefits, though; they allow those who share a bed the space to move around without waking their partner and also leave ample room for kids to crawl into bed with their parents, encouraging familial bonding.
Hammocking Around
If you’ve ever laid in a hammock before, you can thank those in Central and South America for originating this simplistic design. Still, while people around the world may lie in hammocks to relax during the day, many people in Latin America use a hammock as their primary bed. Not only can hammocks help to relieve back pain, but their gentle rocking motion can be enough to soothe you to sleep, and their in-air suspension helps keep you cool.
Just A Frame, Rope, and Fabric
Mattresses aren’t slept on around the world. For instance, in India, one of their traditional beds is the charpei, which is a wooden frame with ropes tied around it to make a net that can then be sat or laid upon. There is a lot of customization available for these beds, as well, allowing them to suit your specific needs.
Those who use a charpei sleep on it as is—no mattress, and most often, they don’t even use a pillow or blanket. This is because one of the main appeals of the charpei is that it allows for ventilation, preventing heat and humidity from interrupting your sleep. In addition to acting as a bed, they may even be found around urban settings, acting similarly to park benches.
Heat Things Up
While those in India are focused on keeping things cool, in China, they’re more focused on keeping warm. The kang is how they accomplish this, which is a sleeping platform that heats their bed. The kang is constructed of brick, stone, or adobe and consists of a fireplace, kang proper, and a chimney. The platform has interior cavities that allow heat from a stove to spread across the platform.
Often, the mattress is rolled onto the platform at night, but in the morning, it is put away so that the platform can be used for other activities.
A Customizable Mattress
In Japan, futons are the mattress of choice, whether people are rich or poor. These thin mattresses can occupy an entire room and be folded on itself to make it thicker. This ability to fold also allows for easy storage.
Sleeping on the floor is believed to offer many benefits. Namely, it is cooler, which allows for better sleep quality. Additionally, a thin mattress on a hard surface is believed to help your muscles naturally relax while also letting the body and joints realign in your sleep.
Sleeping Surfaces Around the World
Our beds serve a critical role in helping us to sleep better. They must be comfortable yet also supportive in order to help our bodies relax and reduce tension come morning. Additionally, they can help with the maintenance of an ideal body temperature.
Around the world, mattresses vary by culture to meet the unique needs of people in different areas. Whether space is an issue, requiring a bed that can easily be folded up and stored during the day, or heat requires a solution that allows for airflow, there are mattresses unique to each area that demonstrate the differences in cultural needs.
No matter how each culture achieves it, the mattresses that they sleep on all serve one key purpose: to promote a more restful night of sleep.
