How the World Sleeps – A Journey Through Bedroom Cultures

Travel brings so many new impressions: unfamiliar smells, unusual sounds, different tastes. But if you really want to understand how a country works, you should also take a peek into the bedroom—purely from a cultural perspective, of course.Because different countries mean different customs, and that includes sleeping habits. Sometimes you lie together in a big double bed, sometimes you sleep alone behind a closed door, sometimes right in the middle of a family room between children, cousins, and the cat.

Even the question of who you share your bed with says a lot about a culture. In Western countries, it’s common to share the bedroom with your partner. In Japan and Korea, on the other hand, sleeping is often a very private matter. Separate beds or even separate bedrooms are nothing unusual there. Quite the opposite in many parts of Southeast Asia, the Arab world, or Africa: here, families often share one room—children, parents, sometimes aunts, uncles, and whoever else might drop by.

In the United States, people often sleep on high box-spring beds that almost look like thrones. Airing out a room is less common; instead, air freshener sprays provide a sense of freshness—and pets in bed are far from rare. A curious side note: in Minnesota, sleeping naked is prohibited. Whether that has to do with the icy winters remains an open question.

In Asia, sleeping often happens in several stages. In Japan, the futon is rolled up in the morning to save space, and people take every opportunity for an inemuri—a short nap at the office, on the train, or even at school. In India and Southeast Asia, people like to rest on a charpai, a woven wooden frame that stays wonderfully airy during tropical nights. And in China, the right to a midday nap was once even enshrined in the constitution—an official siesta for everyone.

Whether with background noise or in silent darkness, alone or in a big family room, on down feathers or woven ropes—we all sleep. And perhaps that’s the beauty of traveling: you don’t just see new places, you also discover how dreams are dreamed elsewhere.