Picture this: You’ve just finished a long day and you’ve changed into your pajamas, removed your makeup and gotten ready for your bedtime routine. But before you could go to bed, here’s an important question: “Do I actually have to take this piece of jewelry off?”
If you wear jewelry on a daily basis, it can be easy to forget to remove them when you wash your hands or change your clothes. While it is tempting to sleep in without taking off your accessories, it’s not always the best choice. With that being said, here are a few important reasons why you should not wear your jewelry to sleep.
Disrupt Your Sleep
Wearing your necklaces to sleep isn’t that bad, but you are more likely to run into some problems if you go to bed with jewelry on a regular basis. One of the most obvious downsides of wearing your jewelry to sleep is the possibility of them tangling with hair or digging into your skin. If you wear bracelets or necklaces with pendants or charms, they may end up poking you in your sleep.
While these accidents won’t cause you much harm, they can damage your precious jewelry like scratching the gemstones or wearing down the metals. If you can’t imagine parting with your jewelry at night, it is better to wear jewelry designs that are soft and flexible so that they won’t interfere with your sleep.
Your Ears Will Sag
While wearing your stud earrings to sleep may not cause as much discomfort, it’s worse if you wear larger and heavier earrings to sleep. Earlobes are prone to lose their elasticity over the years. Sleeping with your earrings on will lead to your earlobes aging and sagging, and cause your earrings and piercings to smell bad with time. Therefore, you should remove your earrings before sleeping so your ears can rest and breathe at night.
Difficult to Remove
When you wake up every morning, you may have noticed that your hands and fingers appear slightly larger. This happens because fluids build up inside the tissues when we lie still at night and this results in slightly swollen hands when we wake up. If you fall asleep wearing a ring, it will become stuck and therefore more difficult to remove it.
To remove your ring from your swollen fingers, simply use liquid soap to help slide it off, or submerge your hand in icy water to reduce the swelling. You can learn how to remove a stuck ring with our guide here.
Irritate Your Skin
Another reason why you should not sleep while wearing jewelry is that it may irritate your skin and cause you discomfort. Jewelry made from materials that aren't hypoallergenic or contain nickel can cause skin irritation and allergic reactions when worn for extended periods. This can result in redness, itching, or rashes.
To prevent skin allergies or irritation, ensure that your jewelry is made of nickel-free metals. Jewelry made of 14k gold, stainless steel or sterling silver is less likely to cause a reaction. You can read more about the different types of hypoallergenic and non-hypoallergenic jewelry here.
Prone to Tarnishing
Although many people have the habit of sleeping with their rings on, it’s ideally better to remove them when you sleep. Removing and storing your jewelry before sleeping helps to keep them in good shape. If you tend to toss and turn in your sleep, you may be damaging your jewelry without knowing it.
When you wear jewelry on a frequent basis, these accessories will pick up oils, dirt and other bacteria. If you don’t take off your jewelry or have a regular cleaning routine, this may cause them to tarnish with time. If your jewelry has tarnished, read our jewelry cleaning guides here on how you can restore your tarnished pieces to their pristine condition.
Jewelry is a big part of our lives, which is why we should always take good care of them. While it is ok to sleep in with your jewelry, it is not always advisable with all the risks mentioned above. Thankfully, all these problems can be prevented with a few simple steps. For instance: before going to sleep, you could find somewhere safe to store your accessories so it’s easy to store them within your reach.
