New Survey of 500 U.S. Bed-Sharers: 70% of Couples Don’t Want the Same Temperature — and 85% of Hot Sleepers Still Keep Their Covers, for Security, Not Warmth

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Couples’ Sleep Temperature Divide Survey finds nighttime overheating is routine, couples’ workarounds are nearly universal — and only 6% of people who keep covers on warm nights say the reason is warmth.

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif., August 11, 2026 — Most Americans who share a bed are sharing it with someone who wants a different temperature. In a new survey of 500 U.S. adults who share a bed with a spouse or partner, 70.2% said they prefer a different temperature than their partner — 46.1% cooler, 24.2% warmer. The survey, commissioned by bedding company Sleeping Dove® and fielded through the Prolific research panel in August 2026, publishes its full results, question wording, and raw toplines under an open license at sleepingdove.com/pages/sleep-survey-2026.

Waking up too hot is the norm, not the exception: 84.5% of bed-sharers do it at least one night in a typical week, and 40.5% three or more nights. Dissatisfaction tracks the frequency directly — 13.3% of people who never wake up hot are unhappy with their nighttime temperature, rising to 57.4% among those hot five to seven nights a week. Women are 2.4 times as likely as men to be in that most-affected group (16.3% vs 6.9%).

The survey also measured what hot sleepers actually do at 2am. Among those who wake up hot at least weekly, 73.6% push the covers off part of their body and 67.7% stick a foot or leg out. The relief rarely lasts: 97.5% of people who push their covers off pull them back on before morning — for most hot sleepers, the night is an on-off cycle, not a single adjustment.

The study’s most striking finding is why the covers always come back. Even on warm nights, 85.0% of hot sleepers keep at least some covering, and when asked the main reason, only 6.1% said warmth. The leading answers were sensory and emotional: “it feels comforting or secure” (58.8%) and “the light weight or pressure feels good” (20.9%). The pattern holds strongest exactly where overheating is worst — among women who wake up hot three or more nights a week, 90.4% still keep covering all or most warm nights. In the entire survey, one woman in that group said she sleeps uncovered.

“People ask why anyone would keep a comforter on a warm night,” said DJ Moua, co-founder of Sleeping Dove and co-inventor of its patented Softwing™ panels. “Because covered is how a person feels safe in bed. We invented our comforter because I kept waking up too hot and didn’t want to give up my covers — and it turns out almost nobody does. You don’t fix overheating by taking the covers away from people. You fix it by letting the heat out while they stay covered.”

Moua, a U.S. Navy veteran, came up with the design after months of waking up too hot at night; co-founder James Edmunds engineered it.

Nighttime temperature is also a two-person problem: 46.0% of bed-sharers are woken at least weekly by cover-adjusting, and 87.0% of couples have used at least one workaround in the past year — 43.8% separate blankets, 44.0% a fan aimed at one side of the bed, and 15.7% occasionally sleeping in separate beds or rooms, the arrangement popular coverage calls a “sleep divorce.”

The market has noticed the problem before the industry solved it: 53.2% of bed-sharers have bought bedding marketed as “cooling,” and 65.4% of those buyers weren’t clearly helped — 46.1% say it didn’t help much, and 19.4% aren’t sure it made a difference. Powered sleep devices face their own wall: only 27.3% of bed-sharers would be “very willing” to use one in or on their bed, with cost (62.5%), cords or plugs near the bed (51.1%), and a stated preference for simple bedding (41.8%) leading the hesitations. Asked what they’d most consider to sleep cooler, respondents ranked lighter or more breathable bedding (46.3%) ahead of powered cooling systems (32.8%) — even though the powered option was listed first on the question.

“We published every number, the full question wording, and the raw toplines under an open license — including results that don’t flatter anyone in this industry, us included,” said James Edmunds, co-founder of Sleeping Dove. “Buyers have been let down by the word ‘cooling’ before; the data is blunt about that. Publishing everything is what makes research worth citing.”

Methodology

Fielded August 9, 2026 via the Prolific research panel under the neutral study name “Sleep habits of people who share a bed.” U.S. residents age 25+, platform-verified as partnered, screened for sharing a bed 4+ nights per week. 500 completions; 484 analyzed after pre-set quality exclusions (attention-check and screener failures; all participants paid). Results unweighted; 61.0% women. Full methodology, question wording, and limitations: sleepingdove.com/pages/sleep-survey-2026-methodology. All statistics may be cited with attribution and a link (CC BY 4.0); a toplines CSV is available on the results page.

About Sleeping Dove

Sleeping Dove® is a West Hollywood, California bedding company founded by DJ Moua and James Edmunds, and maker of the Sleeping Dove Comforter — a cooling comforter with patented Softwing™ panels (U.S. Patent No. 12,557,926), liftable fabric sections that release trapped body heat in seconds so sleepers cool down without giving up their covers. It is the defining product of a third cooling category — structural cooling: not a cooling fabric, not a machine, but a comforter with the cooling system built into its structure. No electricity, no devices. Named “Best for Couples” in Sleep Foundation’s Best Down Alternative Comforters roundup. sleepingdove.com

Media contact

DJ Moua, co-founder & inventor — hello@sleepingdove.com