If you are going to buy one thing this month, buy it here. Light and noise are the two environmental problems with the clearest link to broken sleep, and both have solutions that cost less than a takeaway. This is the category where Black Friday pricing is close to irrelevant, because the good answers were already cheap.
Part of our Black Friday sleep guide.
Light: mask or curtains?
They solve the same problem at different prices and with different trade-offs, and we have compared them directly: blackout curtains versus a mask comes down to whether you need the whole room dark or only your eyes. If you share a room with someone who reads, a mask wins. If you are trying to stop summer dawn waking you at half four, the curtains do.
For masks specifically, fit beats features every time; our round-up of the best sleep masks explains what to look for in the nose seal, which is where cheap masks leak.
Noise: earplugs or a machine?
Both work and they work differently. Earplugs remove sound; a machine covers it. Which is right depends on whether your noise is constant traffic or an unpredictable neighbour, and we have set out that comparison rather than declaring a winner.
If you decide on a machine, our review of white noise machines is blunt about which features are worth paying for. Most are not. A machine that loops a short recording will irritate you within a week, and that is not a price problem.
Where the money does not help
Expensive masks with cooling gel, curtains sold as "100% blackout" that are not, and sound machines with app control you will use twice. The test is simple: does the extra cost remove more light or more sound? If not, it is a feature, not an improvement.
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