I Tried Freezing My Socks Every Night Before Bed to Cool Me Down — Here’s What Happened After a Week

When I was growing up in Texas, I might have experienced summers where the weather was over 100 degrees for 30 days in a row. Fortunately, I lived in a house with central AC and a pool in the backyard. I’ve lived in New York City for 14 years now, and I can firmly say that while the temps might not be as high here as they are in Texas, the heat is just different. 

Walking everywhere in the humid heat, waiting in subway stations with no AC, living in apartments without ceiling fans or central AC — when it’s hot in NYC, it’s really, really hot, in an inescapable way. So it goes without saying that while I do everything I can to keep cool in the summer, like closing my blinds all day and investing in window AC units and fans, I’m always looking for other ways to move the needle when NYC is experiencing a truly oppressive heatwave. That’s why I was excited to come across an article on HuffPost UK suggesting a strange way to cool down quickly during a major heat wave: wearing refrigerated or even frozen socks to bed.

According to HuffPost UK, “refrigerating or even freezing your socks before bed” might help you get better sleep and cool down fast when the temperatures just won’t quit. Even the Red Cross says it works because “cooling your feet helps to bring down your overall body temperature.” 

All you have to do to follow this trick is to put a pair of socks in the freezer or fridge all day and take them out at night and put them on as you get into bed. It’s supposed to help you cool down and, in turn, help you sleep better, as your sleep quality degrades if you are very warm. 

I was curious to see if this method would work for me. Typically, my husband and I only run the AC units in our apartment during the day if it’s above 87 degrees or so, and we’ll run the unit in our bedroom overnight if the heat is sticking around above 75 degrees, depending on the humidity. Otherwise, I just point a powerful fan right at my face and keep the window open. I’m all for low-tech interventions to keep me cooler, but I’m not super-sensitive to the heat overnight either.

For a few days in a row, I kept a pair of socks in my freezer all day long and put them on at night when it was time to go to bed. Every night was a different temperature, and sometimes I was going to bed a bit warmer and sweatier than other nights. I absolutely loved the feeling of putting a properly cold pair of socks on over my feet at night and tucking into bed, but I found that the coldness didn’t last as long as I wanted it to — in fact, it dissipated completely after 20 minutes or so. Overall, I felt like it didn’t really cool me down that much (especially compared to other cooling tricks — more on that later) or help me sleep better. In fact, on warmer nights, I’d wake up uncomfortable, on account of wearing the socks in the heat. All in all, I probably won’t continue doing this, but it wasn’t harmful or anything. 

I could see the frozen socks hack being a really good method if I was really overheated and needed to come down to a normal temperature more quickly — but honestly, if that were the case I’d probably do something like put ice packs on my wrists. Or, honestly, I’d rather follow the method I learned from my AP World History teacher in high school, which is to wash your hands up to your elbows in cold water to let your core temperature come down faster. Both of these tricks work in the same way, which is that by putting cool water or ice on your wrists or your inner elbows, you’re cooling down your blood where it’s the closest to the surface of your skin, and that cooler blood works through your system, bringing down your temperature rapidly. 

My other favorite thing to do on a properly hot day is to wash my feet with cold water before bed, which is sort of a marriage between the hand-washing method and the frozen sock method. I learned that one from my best friend, who hated going to bed with dirty feet, and if I have a particularly grimy and sweaty day walking around the city, it’s one of my favorite things to do before I slip in between my sheets. It soothes my sore feet, cools down my skin a bit, and makes me feel soapy and clean before sleep in a way that lingers longer than cold socks.