You spend about 1/3 of your day asleep in your bed in your bedroom.
Then, most jobs—even the ones where you work from home—account for another 1/3 of the day, a total of 16 hours.
Many people have a toilet, shower, and sink near or adjacent to the bedroom. You’re going to shower and use the toilet right near where you work and sleep. Those activities can easily push you over the 2/3rds mark in the same little area.
How can all this time spent in one place not affect you? Why would you want to turn your bedroom into a jail cell? That’s why, if you work from home, sleeping near where you work is a bad idea.
The brain associates different places with specific activities. When you work in the bedroom, you’re causing your brain to link that place with productivity and activity, not rest. You need both in your life.
Further, many people have a hard time keeping “on time” and “off time” separate. It’s not entirely their fault. In some workplaces, in some cultures, it’s just how things are done. If you try to do something different, you’re going to run into resistance.
That’s not to mention the other potential problems like blue light, work-related clutter, and noise.
Avoiding temptation
Another thing to consider is the way one can get tempted to lie down and take a nap in the middle of the workday.
Instead of doing something related to your job, you could be catching some z’s.
When you’re tired, that bed can be tempting.
Willpower, the way to avoid temptation, is like a muscle. Muscles give out.
It’s understandable why you might want to try working from your bedroom for a little while. There might not be any good alternative. You might not be able to afford a co-working space, at least at first.
If you do have to work from your bedroom, it’s important to get out of your four walls every day during the other third of the day. Fresh air and sunshine has just become vitally important.
When you work from home, you’re voluntarily putting yourself in a jail cell. They have found that in maximum security prisons that the hour of getting out of the cell, getting into the sunshine on the yard is important to mental health. With the most violent offenders, they’re put into an open-air cell in the yard. 
Sometimes you’ve got to work from home, but if you do, at least allow yourself the same grace they give inmates in prison.
Also on the blog:
James Cobb RN, MSN is the founder of the Dream Recovery System, a top sleep blog.
If you click on a link and make a purchase, we may receive a commission. This arrangement doesn’t have any effect on our opinions.