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I have always been against the idea of a TV in my bedroom, but I'm starting to rethink that and thought it might make an interesting discussion here. If you're against a TV in your bedroom, what are your reasons? If you HAVE a TV in your bedroom, is it your regular binge watching haven or is it the occasional “turn on the news while getting dressed” kind of thing? If you have a partner, how did he or she play into the decision to have (or not have) a TV in your bedroom — was it something you both agreed on? A habit of one that the other adopted? A negotiation point?
Just as with making your bed daily, there are going to be people for and against it, so there are no right answers here!
Honestly, I don't even know why I was always so opposed to having a TV in the bedroom, but it predates my marriage — it was just never even a question. And yet, with the iPad, the Chromebook, my iPhone, my Kindle… I'm not exactly winning any arguments on a pristine sleep environment. I think I worried that having a TV in the bedroom would lead to lazy TV viewing in that “ah, fell asleep with the TV on again!” sort of way. To be honest, though, when we did watch TV regularly I used to do it with a glass of wine and at least one device (probably Chromebook or iPad) open in front of me while doing what I call “low energy tasks,” like sorting family photos, online shopping, and finding new photos for older blog posts.
I suppose it's even weirder that I'm thinking about this now, because we watch TV far less regularly than I ever have at any point in my life. When we do watch, we tend to binge watch shows like The Crown that kind of demand your full attention — but still it feels like it might be nice to flip on the news in the morning while getting dressed, so I'm torn.
I don't know, ladies — what are your thoughts? TV in your bedroom: yea or nay?
Psst: As of 2021, Kat's favorite sheets for summer include Lands' End linen sheets and LL Bean's percale sheets. (N.B. that linen sheets aren't for everyone!) If you're on the hunt for winter sheets, the heavier flannels are the best, including Eddie Bauer's Portuguese flannel (generally 5.4 oz), Lands' End (5 oz-6oz), and Garnet Hill. Hunting for the best sheets on a budget? These are reader favorites!
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Anonymous
Watching TV in bed is my greatest pleasure, so yes.
Alice
I do too because it’s more interesting than listening to my boyfriend babble on about work.
Ellen
Me too. If I did not have a 46″ HDTV, I would be bored silly, as I have chased my ex out of both my bed and my life!
I hope to have a new boyfreind and husband soon to share my HDTV with, but for now, it’s just me and the HDTV in the bedroom!
K
I don’t have a TV at all, so any TV-watching is done through streaming services on my laptop. Which is sometimes done in bed. So I guess you could say I have a TV in my bedroom.
ggg
That’s what we do too — watch streaming on our laptops in bed a couple times a week. I wouldn’t install a permanent TV in there. There’s no appropriate wall space to do so anyway.
Cat
No. Husband and I agree that the bedroom is for sleeping and gardening only. Neither of us brings our phones at night, either.
Anonymous
Same. Bedroom is only for sleep and gardening.
Anonymous
yes b/c i have a husband, it came with him
Anon
+1
Lisa
Growing up, my parents never allowed TV in my or my siblings’ bedrooms, but they always had one in theirs. When my now-husband moved in, I didn’t want to get into the habit of putting the TV on every night and falling asleep to it like my parents do. I try to make our bedroom as screen-free of a zone as I can. However, I’ll admit to using Netflix to help me fall asleep when my husband is away, and occasionally we’ll watch a TV episode in bed at night. Overall, I prefer the moments when we get to curl up together without any distractions and enjoy cuddling!
Jennifer
After years in a studio where having a TV meant having a TV in the bedroom, I am against bedroom TV. I do still occasionally like having the background noise when falling asleep, but my current (no longer studio) apartment layout lends itself to having it on without having all the flashing lights while sleeping. Podcasts also help with this.
Anon
I don’t but growing up my parents did so that was always the “norm”. In fact, My grandparents only had a tv in their bedroom bc having one in the living room wasn’t “proper”! For football on Sundays my grandfather would lug the tv down to the living room! They finally got a living room tv and s bedroom tv when he got too old to carry it (in the 90s!)
babyweight
TV in bedroom is for sick days and for distracting kids in the morning.
Anon
+1. We NEVER use it to fall asleep, but it’s handy to have a second TV when someone is sick or when we have friends over for a “guys night” or “girls night”. And yes its primary use is to distract the kids in the morning when one of us is solo parenting – it’s a great incentive to get them up and dressed and quiet while the parent showers and gets ready.
Anonymous
The only time I ever want a tv in the bedroom is sick days. Growing up, my mom had a small black and white tv that sat on the dresser a couple steps away from her bed, and that’s where I’d spend my days home sick from school. Whenever I get a cold now, I still want to curl up in the old comforter she had and watch Bewitched reruns :)
Anon
I don’t, but mostly because I don’t want to buy a second TV! When I was in my early 20s and in my first apartment I realized that nothing/no one was stopping me from watching Netflix (on a laptop) in bed while eating ice cream. To this day the height of luxury is watching a sitcom or standup in bed with a bowl of mint choc chip ice cream ;)
Anon
No, because I have terrible insomnia and anything but very good habits and sleep hygiene means that I’ll be up at all hours.
Ms B
Yes, because for years the routine of hot tea, four ginger cookies, and the Letterman monologue helped me to get five or so hours of sleep before my insomnia would wake me.
Now that general exhaustion has overcome my insomnia (an unadvertised benefit of parenting while working FT plus a side hustle), the joys of letting your four year old climb into your bed and watch an hour of Rescuebots or Puppy Dog Pals at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday while you get an extra hour of sleep are not to be underestimated.
Anonymous
No, but my husband will watch netflix on his ipad pretty often (I always wear a sleep mask and he uses headphones so I don’t even notice when he’s watching it). I will listen to audio books sometimes (streamed from my ipad) to help me go to sleep. But no actual TV.
Senior Attorney
I used to love, love, love watching TV in bed when I was single. Now that I’m married we have a TV in the bedroom but only watch it once in a blue moon.
Anonymous
We have done both. We currently do not have one in our bedroom, but have been talking about whether we should get one. I like cuddling up and watching something together. When our children were younger we used it for distraction on weekend mornings when they were up at the crack of dawn. Now, they sleep a little later and will just go downstairs and turn on the TV themselves.
Lobbyist
No TV but I do watch shows on my ipad in bed.
Leah
We use our bedroom TV as a white noise machine for sleeping. There are a lot of good videos on YouTube: jungle waterfalls, creeks with birdcalls, thunderstorms.
They’re great for people who need noise to sleep. They’re 8 or 10 hours long, so there is no endlessly looping menu song to wake you up, and there’s a huge variety so you don’t get used to only a few tracks.
Anon
Yes, it’s such a pleasure. For an hour a night, after dinner and the kids are in bed, I sit with a heating pad on my back and watch tv. Love it. Plus I’m far from the kitchen and resultant snacking. I am a good sleeper though, so I don’t worry about bad hygiene.
I also love movie nights with the kids.
Katie
Never had a TV in the bedroom growing up or as a single woman, but my husband likes to put on a tv show to fall asleep to and when we moved in together, the TV went up and I soon found it hard to fall asleep without a show on. So while I’d prefer no TV in the bedroom, I’m happy we have one.
sigh
We tried it once. our gardening time and sleep time and quality were compromised. No more tvs.
Worry about yourself
Yes, I do. I know it’s probably not the healthiest thing, but I like to have it on when I’m getting ready for work, getting ready for bed, cleaning my room, or when I just want a little me-time in my own space. I’ve never had my own place, I’ve always lived with either family or roommates, so the living room TV has always been shared, having a TV in my room ensures that I can watch what I want on my own when I want to.
I haven’t used it much since my guy and I moved in, but it’s still good to have. Sometimes we like an episode of Community when we’re settling into bed.
It’s always been a small TV though.
SC
I don’t have a TV in the bedroom, but DH and I bring screens into the bedroom every night. I usually read on my Kindle while DH plays a computer game for an hour or so, then we watch a show together and fall asleep cuddling. I usually wake up before the rest of the family and before sunrise, and on non-gym mornings, I read on my Kindle until Kiddo wakes up.
AnonInfinity
I don’t. My ex-husband insisted on one, and I hated it. That was literally the first object to go when he moved out.
I like my bedroom to be my calm and quiet sanctuary, and for me, tv does not add to that. I’m not sure if it’s the flashing light, or the brightness, or what. I do have a little bluetooth speaker in there to listen to music or podcasts when I’m getting ready in the mornings or folding laundry. I normally read in bed, either a book or on my phone, so it’s not completely a screen-free environment, just no tv.
Anon
Growing up I did not, as a single woman I had a small 12 inch one across the room, mostly because I liked to fall asleep listening to football games rather than imagining every creepy noise in my house was a serial killer. Now DH and I have a massive 55 inch (thank you Big Screen Store guys who talked him down from a 65) that replaced the previous 42 he brought in when we moved in together. I am very anti TV in the bedroom – for him he was never allowed one in his bedroom as a kid and I think he is still secretly rebelling, but whatever. At the end of the day, it was really, really, really important to him for whatever reason, and while it’s a fight we had, I came around to his side because he felt so strongly about it (and I usually get my way about house things – so it was important for him to feel like his decisions are respected too). Compromise position is that it is tucked in an alcove on top of the dresser so it doesn’t monopolize attention in the bedroom rather than wall-mounted front and center, and he got a pair of bluetooth headphones so he can listen to it without disturbing me (the light generally doesn’t bother me, but I have trouble tuning out dialogue to fall asleep, other than sports). We probably watch shows together maybe 1-2x a week after baby goes to bed, and it’s useful for the baby to watch sesame street in the morning in our bed if the adults aren’t quite ready to be awake, but mostly it’s him watching TV after the rest of us are sleeping.
Anonymous
I dont have one and don’t have a good spot for one in my room, but I feel like every ex of mine did and wished that I had one. I find that bringing my laptop into bed for netflix is good enough on the rare occasion that I really really want to watch something in bed, but I would probably cave to a man’s wishes if he did all the work to set one up. I prefer watching in bed with a partner than alone.
Team no tv
I have never had a tv in my bedroom, but my husband has always had one. The first few years of marriage, I gave in and we had one. We just moved recently and I insisted that we try not having a television in the new master bedroom. So far – he hasn’t missed it. I love having a TV and video game free space :)
Beth O
I have one and use it to watch Jimmy Kimmel or SNL before going to bed. On weekends I will watch shows off the DVR while I fold laundry or clean. It probably gets watched a couple hours a week.
Drago Cucina
I need a dark, quiet room to sleep in. So, when I married 30+ years ago I insisted on no TV in the bedroom. For most of our marriage we’ve only had one. It drives me a bit bonkers when people put on the TV as background when I’m visiting.
Anonymous
If I could afford one of the units that come out of a
Dresser or chest like on mtv cribs I could be convinced. When I had roommates I had a small 25 inch flatscreen hooked up to Netflix. Now we have a tv in the bedroom hooked up to a DVD player we use it if we are sick or feeling really lazy
Anonymous
I have a really tiny one, but only because I bought a new and only very slightly larger TV when I moved into my current apartment and was too lazy to deal with the other one. I turn it on probably once every 6 months and really just need to get rid of it, but…work. I don’t turn on the TV in my living room any more often, though. I watch anything I want to watch on my iPad.
Anonymous
Late to the party, but I can’t stand all the little blue flashing lights on a TV when I am trying to sleep. Even in a hotel room I try to block that extra light with clothes or towels. So strong no from me. Also, I live in a small one-bedroom so it would look absurd.
JB
Late to the party, but I can’t stand all the little blue flashing lights on a TV when I am trying to sleep. Even in a hotel room I try to block that extra light with clothes or towels. So strong no from me. Also, I live in a small one-bedroom so it would look absurd.
Consultant
I’m single and live alone (perks of living in the Midwest). I didn’t have a bedroom TV for years, but I got one a couple of years ago and love it. I think it encourages me to go to bed at a reasonable hour instead of staying up, laying on the couch. I don’t have cable or Netflix so the choices are limited but I love laying in bed on weekend mornings to watch Today or GMA. Small pleasures.
Anon
I don’t have a TV in the living room so there are TVs in two bedrooms – in the “guest” room, which is our defacto family room, and in the master bedroom. Mainly we have two TVs because I don’t really want to watch cartoons or sports, I prefer movies.
I always said no TVs in kids rooms but streaming has changed everything. My kids are now teens and can watch videos or movies anywhere.
Auumn
What did you end up deciding? I’m torn myself. Part of me would like to watch movies and play video games, amd the other part of me likes a quiet space without tv