How to Sleep During a Power Outage in Ontario

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Why Ontario Loses Power So Often

If you live in Ontario, you already know this drill. The lights flicker, the furnace clicks off, and suddenly the house goes quiet in a way that feels wrong.

Power outages are not rare here. They are a regular part of living in this province. The May 2022 derecho tore across southern Ontario with winds reaching 190 km/h, snapping over 400 hydro poles and leaving more than a million customers without power. Some rural communities had no electricity for weeks. Hydro Ottawa called the damage worse than the 1998 ice storm.

Then in March 2025, another ice storm hit central Ontario hard. More than 175,000 customers lost power. Hydro One found over 1,800 broken poles. Areas around Peterborough and Orillia saw 20 to 25 millimetres of ice buildup. Tens of thousands of families were still without power a full week later. Some outage estimates stretched into May.

The challenge is not just losing the lights. It is losing your entire sleep environment. No furnace. No air conditioning. No fans. No white noise machine. No phone charger for your alarm. For some people, no CPAP machine. Everything that regulates your bedroom temperature and sleep routine disappears in one click.

Here is how to handle it, season by season.

Winter Outage: Sleeping Without Heat

This is the dangerous one. A well-insulated Ontario home can hold its temperature for several hours after the furnace stops, but overnight in January, indoor temperatures can drop below 10°C. Older homes and poorly insulated houses cool down even faster.

Pick One Room and Seal It

Do not try to heat the whole house. Choose one interior room, ideally on the main floor with the fewest windows. Move everyone in. Roll towels along the bottom of the door. Hang blankets over windows. You are creating a smaller space that holds body heat better.

Layer Smart, Not Just Heavy

Piling on five cotton blankets is not as effective as layering the right materials. Start with a base layer against your skin (thermal underwear or wool long johns). Add a fleece or wool mid-layer. Then use your warmest blankets or a wool duvet, which insulates even when damp. Put a sleeping bag on top if you have one rated to -15°C or lower.

Protect Your Head and Feet

You lose significant heat through your head and extremities. Wear a toque and warm socks to bed. It sounds odd, but it makes a noticeable difference when your bedroom is sitting at 8°C.

Eat Before Bed

Your body generates heat through digestion. A warm meal before bed (even something heated on a camp stove or gas barbecue outside) gives your body fuel to keep your core temperature up overnight. Avoid alcohol. It feels warming but actually accelerates heat loss from your skin.

Summer Outage: Sleeping Without AC or Fans

July in Brantford without air conditioning is uncomfortable. Without even a fan, it becomes genuinely difficult to fall asleep. Your body needs to drop about 1 to 2 degrees in core temperature to initiate sleep, and a hot, still bedroom works against that process.

Move to the Lowest Level

Heat rises. Your basement will be 3 to 5 degrees cooler than your upstairs bedroom. If you have a mattress you can drag downstairs, or even just pull the mattress off the bed and lay it on the basement floor, do it. Concrete floors stay cool for hours after the power goes out.

Create Cross-Ventilation

Open windows on opposite sides of the house. Even a slight breeze creates airflow across your skin that helps evaporate sweat and cool you down. If there is no breeze at all, a battery-powered fan is worth its weight in gold.

Damp Towel Trick

Soak a towel in cool water, wring it out, and drape it across your forehead, neck, or chest. As the water evaporates, it pulls heat away from your body. You can also dampen a sheet and sleep under it with a window open. The evaporative cooling effect is surprisingly strong.

Cold Shower Before Bed

A cool (not ice cold) shower before you lie down drops your skin temperature and signals your brain that it is time to sleep. Your water supply works without power in most Ontario homes, at least for a while, since municipal water pressure is typically maintained by the city, not your home's electrical system.

CPAP and Medical Devices: A Safety Issue, Not a Comfort Issue

For the roughly 6% of Canadian adults with diagnosed sleep apnea, a power outage is not just inconvenient. It is a health risk. Without your CPAP machine, your airway can collapse repeatedly through the night, dropping blood oxygen levels and straining your heart.

Most modern CPAP masks have an anti-asphyxia valve that lets you breathe room air if the machine loses power. You will not suffocate. But you will not get treated sleep either, and for people with moderate to severe sleep apnea, even one untreated night can mean dangerous oxygen desaturation.

If you do not have a battery backup and the power goes out, sleep on your side. Side sleeping keeps your airway more open than sleeping on your back and reduces the severity of obstructive events. It is not a replacement for CPAP therapy, but it is better than nothing for one night.

Your Mattress Matters More Without Power

This is the part most people do not think about until the power is already out.

When your furnace, air conditioner, fans, heated mattress pad, and cooling topper are all running, your mattress is only doing part of the thermal work. The rest of your sleep environment picks up the slack.

During a power outage, your mattress is doing all of it.

A mattress with good airflow and breathable materials (natural latex, individually wrapped coils, wool comfort layers) handles temperature swings better than a dense block of memory foam. Foam traps body heat in summer and feels cold and stiff in winter. Materials that breathe adjust with you, not against you.

This is not a sales pitch. It is physics. When every other temperature control device in your bedroom is dead, what you are sleeping on becomes the most important piece of the equation. The families we talk to at our Brantford showroom who have been through multi-day outages always say the same thing: the right mattress made the difference between sleeping and not sleeping.

Power Outage Sleep Checklist: What to Have Ready

What About White Noise and Sound Machines?

A lot of people depend on a fan or white noise machine to fall asleep. When the power goes out, the sudden silence can be just as disruptive as the temperature change.

A few options that do not need electricity:

• Earplugs: They block outside noise and create a consistent, muffled quiet that many people find just as effective as white noise.
• Phone app: Most white noise apps use very little battery. If your phone is charged, run one at low volume for an hour or two.
• Open a window slightly: Wind, rain, and outdoor ambient sound can fill the same role as a machine, especially during a storm.

If you rely on a sound machine every night, keep a backup plan. Earplugs are cheap and take up no space in an emergency kit.

Related Reading

• Best Temperature for Sleep: What the Research Says
• Sleep Apnea and Your Mattress: Position, CPAP Setup, and What to Know
• Emergency Sleep Kit for Ontario
• Cool Breeze Cooling Mattress
• Natura Wool Duvet
• Power Outage Sleep Tips for Ontario
• Power Outage Sleep Tips for Ontario: How to Stay Comfortable Without Electricity

Shop: Adjustable Beds at Mattress Miracle