Cold feet, warm heart? It's all good—but that smartypants partner who teases you for wearing socks in bed? Just keep this article to yourself...
New Research: This Clothing Item That’s Often Worn in Bed Is “20 Times Dirtier Than a Toilet”
Published on Jan. 28, 2025
It’s not like anyone asks for cold feet at night, and recent freezing temperatures in many parts of the country have been all the more reason to slip on some fuzzy socks before you pull up the covers. In the past, some science has shown that trying to fall asleep with cold feet is often actually impossible. Also, the Cleveland Clinic has explained that when you wear socks to sleep, you can help keep your core body temp at optimal levels by opening up your blood vessels and stimulating blood flow. For many, that’s beneficial all around.
But there’s a little something you might want to add to your nighttime wardrobe if, in fact, you’re a bedtime sock-wearer: Slippers. That’s because a U.K.-based mattress company surveyed 1,130 Reddit users to find that among people who wear socks to bed, only 30% said they bother to put on a clean pair.
From there, the ick factor grew. The company also conducted swab tests on eight sample pairs of socks that had been worn all day, from morning to night, in order to assess the microbial content. The researchers found that the samples were teeming with bacteria at a rate that was 20 times “dirtier than a toilet seat,” and worse than your average television remote—a notoriously grimy gizmo.
The socks tested positive for dust mites, fungus, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a species of bacteria that can potentially cause infection in the skin, blood, and lungs.
The team also made a discovery that two of the sock pairs, or a quarter of what they tested, contained fecal bacteria. If you assume this would have been the result of the walk from the bathroom to bed, that seems feasible enough, but the team actually suggests the fecal bacterial population most likely originated from cockroach droppings, “all of which could have been transferred onto the bedding of the wearers,” they report.
It’s a good reminder to wash your sheets as often as you should, wear clean socks to bed if you can, and slip into some house shoes to establish a barrier between your socks and the floor.
What we’re not going to tell you is to take those socks off, because we all know quality sleep is precious enough as it is. Sock-wearing is just one symptom of the body’s natural process to lower its core temperature to help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer.
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