When your bedroom is too hot, it becomes nearly impossible to sleep. And even if you do manage to drift off, your sleep is more likely to be fitful and incomplete. You rise in the morning, still tired and poorly rested despite your need to get moving and go to work or school.

Maybe your air conditioner can't keep up. Maybe your house has lousy airflow, and your bedroom heats up unreasonably. Fortunately, your sleeping temperature doesn't rely 100% on your home's ambient temperature. Here are some of our best summer sleep tricks for staying cool at night.

1. The One-Foot Trick

Certain parts of the body release heat better than others. The two best ways to lose body heat are through the top of your head and the bottoms of your feet. That is why hats and warm socks are so important in the winter, and why your feet often decide to kick the covers off on their own.

Most people prefer to sleep with at least a top sheet and light blanket, and you can still do this on hot nights with the simple one-foot trick. Your feet may have even done this of their own volition. Stick one foot out from under the covers, possibly even off the edge of the bed, to catch cool breezes and help you dissipate body heat.

2. Cold Water Bottle

Hot water bottles are lovely in the winter. But they have an interesting alternate use in the summer. Try sticking your water-filled squishy bottle in the freezer for 30 minutes to an hour before bed. It will cause it to get cold and slushy but not fully freeze into a block of ice. The terry cloth the water bottle wears will help to keep the cold directly off your skin while radiating cold temperatures throughout your bed.

Using a cold water bottle between you helps summer time snuggling become more pleasant and less sticky. The container will eventually warm up in the night, but it's a great way to get to sleep. Plus, a pretty good method for getting back to sleep after a midnight snack on a hot summer night.

3. Cool Gel or Foam Topper

Specific mattress toppers are also designed to feel cool to the touch and prevent your mattress from collecting heat during the night. Some toppers are wavy, promoting airflow and carrying away heat. Others are more fanciful. Gel toppers, for example, are a particular type of mattress topper filled with a gel that is resistant to raising in temperature. The gel is always a little more cooling than your skin, and that translates through your smooth sheets.

Foam toppers are more traditional, but modern bed foam has advanced a great deal in the last decade. Today, foam mattresses have several layers of different-consistency foam. Foam mattresses once had a reputation for trapping heat as they form to your body. But a rippled cooling foam topper is designed to pull heat away create cooling airflow under the body.

4. Percale Weave Sheets

A lot of people suffer from overheating in bed because they use the same bedding in the winter and summer. For some, it's about sleeping with your favorite blanket or set of sheets. For others, it's just easier to wash and re-apply the same bedding every laundry day. But sleeping with the wrong bedding can make it impossible to cool off at night.

Make sure that during warm seasons, you're sleeping with fresh, smooth, and breathable sheets. Percale is the best kind of weave, as it is cool and crisp with no 'fuzziness' to create unwanted insulation between you and the bed.

5. Window Air Conditioner

While bedding or a mattress can trap heat around your body while you sleep, all too often the issue is with your house instead. If your AC can't keep up—or is non-existent—any warm night can quickly become too warm for sleeping. Even if your home AC is insufficient, you can still cool your bedroom with the help of a well-placed window AC unit instead.

Mounting an AC in your bedroom window is an excellent solution for cool sleeping because it concentrates the cold. You can compensate for a weak AC, keep the rest of the house warmer for children and seniors, or save money by only cooling the room where you need to sleep.

6. Windy Airflow

Fans are another way to help keep yourself fresh at night even if your place is warm. Moving air helps your body (and your sheets) to release the heat that builds up when you sleep. Start by turning your ceiling fan up to its highest setting and if that's not enough, get a few box fans to blow air in a big circle around the room.

A fan pointing out the door can help blow hot air out of your room, but all you need is air moving past your body. If your door is closed, aim the fan so that the wind will bounce off of walls and create a cold, windy vortex. The moving air will carry heat away from your body. If high fans cause your hair to tickle your face, consider sleeping in a bandana or sleeping mask.

7. Breezy Summer Blanket

It can be hard to switch to your summer blanket when the weather gets warm. The lighter weight is odd, and some find it disruptive as they adjust to the transition. But the perfect summer blanket is what can promote deep warm-weather slumber. A knit blanket can provide the weight you miss without the insulation of a heavy comforter. Or the right duvet can seem fluffy while offering air circulation in the night.