Should You Make Your Bed Every Morning?
Every few years an article circulates claiming that making your bed is bad for you, because it traps dust mites in a warm humid duvet rather than letting them dry out. Every few years, a great many people forward it to their partner as vindication.
The claim has a real basis, and it's also more complicated than the headlines suggest. Here's what the argument actually says, what it gets right, and what we'd suggest doing about it.
The Dust Mite Argument
Dust mites live in bedding and feed on the skin cells we shed. They need humidity to survive, absorbing moisture from the air rather than drinking, and they do best in warm, damp conditions. You lose a significant amount of moisture overnight through breathing and perspiration, much of it into your bedding.
The argument follows logically: make the bed immediately and you seal that moisture in, keeping the duvet warm and humid all day, which is exactly what mites want. Leave it open and the bedding dries out, making conditions less hospitable. Research from Kingston University attracted attention along these lines some years ago, suggesting an unmade bed could reduce mite populations by allowing moisture to evaporate.
Where the Argument Gets Complicated
It's a reasonable mechanism, but real bedrooms are messier than models. Household humidity matters enormously, and in a typically damp British home, an unmade bed may not dry out much anyway. Ventilation matters more than whether the duvet is folded back, since a closed, unventilated room stays humid regardless of how the bed is arranged.
There's also a trade-off nobody mentions: an open bed collects more airborne dust and skin cells during the day than a covered one. And the practical effect on symptoms for most people is modest. If you have a diagnosed dust mite allergy, hot washing your bedding weekly, using a washable mattress protector and ventilating the room will do far more than leaving the duvet crumpled.
The Case for Making It
Beyond hygiene, there's a decent argument for the habit itself. A made bed makes a bedroom feel ordered, and a calm, uncluttered bedroom genuinely supports better sleep, since the room becomes associated with rest rather than with mess. Getting into a neat bed at night is more pleasant than getting into the one you climbed out of, which sounds trivial and is the sort of small thing that shapes how you feel about going to bed.
There's also the argument, popular for a reason, that completing one small task first thing sets a productive tone for the day. Whether that's psychology or folklore, plenty of people find it true. And practically, a made bed protects the bedding from daytime dust, pets and anything else that lands on it.
What We'd Actually Suggest
Do both, in sequence. Throw the duvet back when you get up and leave the bed open while you shower, dress and have breakfast. Open a window if you can. Then make it before you leave the house.
That gives you an hour or so of airing, which is when most of the overnight moisture evaporates, followed by a made bed for the rest of the day. It resolves the argument entirely, costs nothing, and takes no more total time than making it immediately. If you want the dust mite benefit and a tidy room, this is how you get both rather than choosing.
The Things That Matter More
If dust mites are your actual concern rather than a debating point, the interventions that work are unglamorous. Wash bedding weekly at a temperature high enough to deal with mites, generally 60°C where the fabric allows. Use a washable mattress protector and a pillow you can launder. Ventilate the bedroom daily, since humidity is the controlling factor. Vacuum the room, including under the bed, regularly.
Those four do considerably more than the made-or-unmade question, which is why it's slightly odd that the bed-making debate gets the attention. Our washable, low maintenance duvet covers are part of that, since the cover is the layer taking body oils and skin contact, and washing it regularly matters far more to bedroom hygiene than whether it spent the day folded back.
So, Should You?
Make it, but air it first. The dust mite argument isn't nonsense, and airing the bed for an hour captures most of its benefit while keeping the psychological and practical advantages of a made bed.
And if you don't make your bed and don't intend to start, the honest position is that it isn't doing you much harm either, provided your bedroom is ventilated and your bedding gets washed. It's a small variable in a system where washing temperature and room humidity matter far more. Anyone using the dust mite study to win a domestic argument should probably concede that quietly.
What Airing Actually Involves
Since the compromise depends on airing properly, it's worth saying what that means, because throwing a corner of the duvet back doesn't achieve much. Pull the duvet right back to the foot of the bed, or fold it over on itself, so the largest possible area of both the duvet's underside and the sheet is exposed to the air. That's where the overnight moisture is.
Opening a window for even ten minutes makes a substantial difference, because the limiting factor is usually the humidity of the room rather than the bedding itself. In a sealed bedroom, moisture leaving the duvet simply raises the humidity of the air around it and then goes nowhere. This is why bedroom ventilation does more for the whole question than the bed-making decision does.
It's worth extending the same thinking to the mattress occasionally. Pulling the bedding right off every few weeks and letting the mattress surface breathe for a few hours does the same job for the layer that gets least attention, and it pairs well with rotating the mattress head to foot while you're at it. Neither takes long, and both address moisture where it actually accumulates rather than only at the top of the bed.
FAQs
The argument is that it traps overnight moisture in the bedding, creating the warm humid conditions dust mites prefer, and there's a reasonable mechanism behind it. In practice the effect is modest compared with washing bedding hot and ventilating the room.
It doesn't kill them, but drier conditions are less favourable to them, since mites absorb moisture from the air and need humidity to thrive. In a damp, poorly ventilated bedroom an unmade bed may not dry out much anyway, so ventilation matters more.
An hour or so covers most of it. Throw the duvet back when you get up, open a window if you can, and make the bed before you leave the house. That captures the drying benefit while still giving you a tidy room for the rest of the day.
Washing bedding weekly at around 60°C where the fabric allows, using a washable mattress protector and a launderable pillow, ventilating the bedroom daily to control humidity, and vacuuming regularly including under the bed. These do far more than bed-making habits.
Indirectly. A tidy bedroom feels calmer and becomes associated with rest rather than mess, and getting into a neat bed at night is more pleasant than getting into a crumpled one. It's a small effect, but it's a real one and it costs two minutes.
