SleepsurgeGetting enough sleep is important if you want to function at your best and not suffer from sleep deprivation. This article covers the recommended hours of sleep for all ages. Find out how much sleep you really need and how you can sleep less and still feel wide awake and alert during the day.
Recommended Hours of Sleep for Adults
The National Sleep Foundation gives a ballpark figure of 7 to 9 hours. There’s no exact agreed amount of recommended sleep that adults need. Different people need different amounts. To work out exactly how much sleep someone needs you need to take into account their genetics and their Sleep quality.
Here are the average number of hours people say they need each night categorized by country, taken from the International Bedroom Poll:
| Country | Average hours sleep needed to function best |
|---|---|
| United States | 7 hours 13 minutes |
| United Kingdom | 7 hours 20 minutes |
| Canada | 7 hours 22 minutes |
| Mexico | 8 hours 15 minutes |
| Germany | 7 hours 31 minutes |
| Japan | 6 hours 58 minutes |
People tend to underestimate how much sleep they need, so take these figures with a pinch of salt. There are also differing social attitudes concerning sleep to take into account. But the general figure of 7 to 8 hours of sleep reported here doesn’t seem too far off the mark.
Recommended Hours of Sleep for Children
Below are the NHS recommended hours of sleep for babies all the way up to teenagers:
| Age | Recommended night-time sleep | Recommended daytime sleep |
|---|---|---|
| 1 week | 8.5 hours | 8 hours |
| 4 weeks | 8.75 hours | 6.75 hours |
| 3 months | 10 hours | 5 months |
| 6 months | 10 hours | 4 hours |
| 9 months | 11.25 hours | 2.75 hours |
| 12 months | 11.5 hours | 2.5 hours |
| 2 years | 11.75 hours | 1.25 hours |
| 3 years | 11 hours | 1 hour |
| 4 years | 11.5 hours | – |
| 5 years | 11 hours | – |
| 6 years | 10.75 hours | – |
| 7 years | 10.5 hours | – |
| 8 years | 10.25 hours | – |
| 9 years | 10 hours | – |
| 10 years | 9.75 hours | – |
| 11 years | 9.5 hours | – |
| 12 years | 9.25 hours | – |
| 13 years | 9.25 hours | – |
| 14 years | 9 hours | – |
| 15 years | 8.75 hours | – |
| 16 years | 8.5 hours | – |
The amount of sleep children need reduces as they grow up. Daytime naps should be gently phased out by the ages of 3 to 4.
Note that teenagers need much more sleep than adults. In addition, their body clocks are wired to stay up later and therefore sleep in later. This behavior is often misunderstood for them being lazy but they’re often just trying to get the sleep they need.
How to Reduce your Recommended Hours of Sleep
The amount of sleep you need is set in your DNA. It’s not possible to train yourself to need less sleep. It is however possible to get more sleep in less time. You can do this by improving your:
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Sleep efficiency – The time spent in bed vs. time spent asleep. By learning how to fall asleep fast, you can improve your sleep efficiency and spend less time in bed as a result.
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Sleep quality – The amount of sleep you spend in deep sleep. The deeper your sleep, the better sleep quality you’ll have, the less time you need to spend sleeping
There’s such a thing as long sleepers and short sleepers. These are people who either need much more or much less sleep than everyone else. These people represent less than a percentage of the total population. Research has shown that most people who see themselves as short sleeps are sleep deprived. If you want to sleep less, improving your sleep habits is the only way to do so without sleep deprivation.
