Your Mattress Is Not the Key to a Good Night’s Sleep

We may hold on to the dream that the perfect mattress is the key to a great evening of sleep, but science shows that the answer may lie in lighting.

Twenty years ago, the discovery of a photosensitive pigment deep inside the human eye helped researchers understand how blind people can wake up naturally in the morning without seeing sunlight. The pigment, melanopsin, picks up the blue light of the color spectrum, which signals the brain to energize.