How much sleep do I need
Seven to nine hours is the adult guidance. How you feel at 11am tells you more than the number does.
The short answer
Adults: 7 to 9 hours. The NHS says that on average adults need 7 to 9 hours, children need 9 to 13, and toddlers and babies need 12 to 17.
It is a population range, not a personal prescription. The National Sleep Foundation expert panel that set these ranges, published in Sleep Health in 2015, says sleep requirements vary across the lifespan and from person to person, and that durations outside the ranges may sometimes be appropriate. It also warns that habitually sleeping well outside the normal range may signal a health problem. The specific figures this page used to give for how far outside is still normal were not in that report, so they have been removed.
How much, by age
| Age | Typical need | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Newborn, 0 to 3 months | 14 to 17 hours | Highly irregular. Follow safer sleep guidance. |
| Infant, 4 to 11 months | 12 to 15 hours | Includes naps |
| Toddler, 1 to 2 | 11 to 14 hours | Includes naps |
| Pre-school, 3 to 5 | 10 to 13 hours | Naps taper across this range |
| School age, 6 to 13 | 9 to 11 hours | Frequently under-met on school nights |
| Teenager, 14 to 17 | 8 to 10 hours | Body clock shifts later. Not laziness. |
| Adult, 18 to 64 | 7 to 9 hours | The headline number |
| Older adult, 65+ | 7 to 8 hours | Often more fragmented, not less needed |
Every row in that table comes from one place: the National Sleep Foundation expert panel convened in 2015, which brought together 18 experts from 12 organisations and published its recommendations in Sleep Health. Newborns 14 to 17 hours, infants 12 to 15, toddlers 11 to 14, preschoolers 10 to 13, school aged children 9 to 11, teenagers 8 to 10, young adults and adults 7 to 9, older adults 7 to 8. The NHS frames the same thing more coarsely, at 7 to 9 hours for adults, 9 to 13 for children and 12 to 17 for toddlers and babies, and does not publish the bands in between.
Two rows worth dwelling on. Teenagers genuinely have a later body clock, a biological shift rather than a behavioural one, which is why early school starts collide with it. That shift is widely described and neither source above states it, so take it as background rather than as sourced guidance.
And older adults do not need dramatically less sleep, despite the common belief: 7 to 8 hours against 7 to 9 for adults, in the same report. What changes is the sleep itself. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute says slow wave sleep continues to decrease through adulthood and that older people may not have any at all, which is a change in quality rather than a reduction in need.
The signs you are getting enough
More useful than counting hours, because the number varies and the outcome does not.
You wake without an alarm, roughly on time, at least some of the time.
You are alert through the late morning without needing caffeine to function.
You do not fall asleep unintentionally in the day: on the sofa at 4pm, on the bus, in meetings.
You do not sleep dramatically longer at weekends. Needing hours more on a Saturday than on a Tuesday is a debt signal. No source used here puts a number on how many hours counts, so none is given.
You do not fall asleep the instant your head lands. Dropping off immediately, every night, is a sign of insufficient sleep rather than good sleep. The 10 to 20 minute window this page used to quote is not published by the NHS or by the panel above, so it has gone.
Quantity is not the only variable
Eight broken hours is not eight hours. The NHLBI puts a sleep cycle at 80 to 100 minutes with four to six of them in a night, and both deep sleep and REM matter, so fragmentation costs you more than the clock suggests.
Common causes of fragmentation that are worth ruling out before anything else:
Temperature. NHS Every Mind Matters says a room that is quiet, dark and cool is easier to sleep in, and suggests adjusting the temperature or opening a window where it is safe to. In my own trade the duvet is usually the culprit rather than the mattress: 7 to 10.5 tog suits most modern UK bedrooms, and 13.5 is a convention from draughtier housing.
Light. The NHS advises a dark room, keeping clocks out of view and the phone face down, and says the blue light from screens can make it harder to fall asleep. The melatonin mechanism is the usual explanation for why, and the NHS does not state it.
Alcohol. The NHS says alcohol and nicotine can have disruptive effects on sleep and advises avoiding them for one to two hours before bed. The pattern people describe is falling asleep faster and then waking early, which fits fragmentation of the second half of the night.
Caffeine. The NHS notes that tea, coffee and some soft drinks contain caffeine, which can make you feel more awake, and suggests a warm milky drink or herbal tea instead. How long it keeps working varies between people and the NHS publishes no figure, so this page no longer gives one.
A partner. On a shared bed, motion transfer wakes people who never attribute it to the mattress.
Sleep debt, and what actually repays it
Short sleep accumulates. A week of six hours against a need of eight is not a neutral week.
What helps: a modest, consistent extension across several nights, rather than one enormous lie-in. The half hour to an hour this page used to specify is not a figure any source here publishes, so what is left is the shape of the advice without the number.
What does not: a huge weekend catch-up, which shifts your body clock later and makes Sunday night worse. NINDS is cautious here too: catch-up sleep may not fully make up for sleep you have already lost, depending on how deprived you are. The Monday morning problem is partly self-inflicted and partly fixable.
Keep the wake time steady and move the bedtime. That emphasis is mine: NHS Every Mind Matters asks for regular times at both ends and does not say which of the two matters more. It is still the cheapest change on this page.
Sleeping a lot and still tired
If you regularly sleep nine or ten hours and still feel unrefreshed, more sleep is not the answer and the cause is worth investigating.
The NHS lists narcolepsy, sleep apnoea, restless legs syndrome, depression, bipolar disorder and ME or chronic fatigue syndrome among the causes of excessive daytime sleepiness, and adds that some medicines, drinking too much alcohol and taking drugs can cause it too. Its page on tiredness with no obvious cause adds iron deficiency anaemia, diabetes and an overactive thyroid.
Breathing that stops and starts, gasping, snorting or choking noises, loud snoring, waking up a lot, or feeling very tired in the day are the main symptoms of sleep apnoea, and the NHS says to see a GP if you have any of them. That is a GP appointment, not a new mattress and not a sleep app, whatever this site has to sell you.
If falling or staying asleep has been the problem for weeks rather than nights, the threshold is the NHS one: habits have not helped, months rather than weeks of trouble sleeping, or an effect on daily life you are finding it hard to cope with. What a GP may then offer is cognitive behavioural therapy, sometimes, either face to face with a therapist or as an online self-help programme. An earlier version of this page promoted that to the first-line treatment in the UK. The NHS does not put it that way, so neither does this page now.
What improves sleep, in order of evidence
A consistent wake time, seven days a week. Free, and the NHS asks for similar times at both ends of the night, kept the same even on days you are not working.
Morning daylight. Outdoors rather than at a window, even on an overcast British morning. It is the standard advice for anchoring the body clock, and it is worth saying that the NHS pages used here neither quantify it nor rank it, so the duration and the brightness comparison this page used to give have both been dropped.
A dark bedroom. Blackout lining or a mask.
A cool room and the right tog. Being too warm to settle is routinely misread as being unable to switch off.
Getting out of bed if you cannot sleep. This one is NHS advice rather than received wisdom. Every Mind Matters says not to force it, and that if you are still awake after around 20 minutes you should get up, sit somewhere comfortable, do something relaxing, and go back to bed when you feel sleepy.
Then the bed itself, which matters if you wake uncomfortable rather than simply waking. It is last on this list deliberately, and it is the only item on the list this site earns anything from.
Who wrote this, and what the table is actually based on
I sell beds and have done for over ten years. That is useful for tog ratings and motion transfer and useless as a medical credential, and no doctor has reviewed this page.
The hours by age are not mine. Every row comes from the National Sleep Foundation expert panel published in Sleep Health in 2015, cross-checked against the coarser bands the NHS publishes. Every clinical threshold on the page is the NHS in its own words. Where I have added my own emphasis, such as the wake time mattering more than the bedtime, it now says so. Several numbers that were here before are gone because nothing authoritative publishes them. This is general information and not a substitute for seeing a GP.
Related reading
How sleep works
How this site works
Nothing here is paid for by a brand. No manufacturer has copy approval, a preview, or the ability to change a score, and where a link earns a commission that never changes a ranking.
Where a brand does not publish a specification, that is stated rather than estimated, because an absent number is itself information. The corrections log and the products I will not recommend page are both public.
Questions people ask
How much sleep do adults need?
The NHS says adults need 7 to 9 hours on average, which matches the National Sleep Foundation panel range. It is a population range rather than a personal prescription, and that panel notes requirements vary from person to person and that durations outside the range may sometimes be appropriate.
How do I know if I am getting enough sleep?
You wake without an alarm at least sometimes, you are alert through the late morning without caffeine, you do not fall asleep unintentionally in the day, and you do not need hours more sleep at the weekend than on a weekday.
Can you catch up on sleep at weekends?
A modest consistent extension across several nights helps more than one long lie-in, which shifts your body clock later and makes Sunday night worse. NINDS adds that catch-up sleep may not fully make up for sleep already lost.
Do older adults need less sleep?
Not dramatically. The National Sleep Foundation panel puts older adults at 7 to 8 hours against 7 to 9 for adults. Sleep becomes lighter and more fragmented with age, which is a change in quality rather than a reduction in need.
Why am I tired after eight hours of sleep?
Fragmentation costs more than the clock suggests, and common causes are temperature, light, alcohol and caffeine. The NHS says to see a GP if you have been feeling tired for a few weeks and are not sure why, or if the tiredness is affecting your daily life.