How to Get More Deep Sleep: A Practical Guide to Deeper, More Restorative Nights
Brittany Ferri, PhD, OTR/L Occupational Therapist, Writer
July 28, 2026
Many of us have experienced a poor night of sleep before. You may have done everything right: gotten in bed early, fallen asleep at the right time, and spent the whole night sleeping, yet you woke up feeling groggy and unrefreshed. This often happens when you aren’t getting enough deep sleep, which tends to have a big impact on you the following day.
In order to get the right amount of deep sleep, adults need at least 7 hours or more of sleep each night. However, research shows that over 30% of adults sleep less than 7 hours per night. You can’t force yourself to get more deep sleep, but you can implement certain habits and routines to encourage more of it. In this article, we’ll teach you various strategies to help you do this.
Deep Sleep, Explained: What It Is and Why It Matters
As the third phase in our sleep cycle, deep sleep (also known as slow-wave sleep) is considered the most restorative part of our sleep. During deep sleep, our brain creates long bursts of delta waves, which are crucial for learning, memory, and recovery. Deep sleep allows us to process anything we learned or did from the previous day and helps our bodies physically and mentally recover from a day of activity. This plays a big part in cognitive and emotional health, which we rely on for various tasks throughout our lives.
Why Deep Sleep Matters for Body and Mind
Deep sleep is essential for a range of bodily functions. This sleep phase is the time when our body’s immune system is strengthened (helping us fight off infections), our muscles and bones are reinforced (allowing us to remain active), and tissue regrows (enabling us to recover from injuries or periods of overuse). Deep sleep also triggers the reset and release of various hormones. One such natural chemical is growth hormone, which allows us to metabolize food and properly use it to sustain our bodies.
Additionally, deep sleep is associated with other hormones, including cortisol, melatonin, insulin, estrogen, and testosterone, which all rely on deep sleep to maintain balanced levels. Cortisol, which is one of the major stress hormones in the body, works with melatonin (which naturally helps us form sleep and wake cycles). Therefore, someone lacking deep sleep can experience an imbalance of cortisol, leading to further sleep disturbances. Insulin helps regulate metabolism and blood glucose levels, while estrogen and testosterone are sex hormones that play a big part in sleep quality, mood stabilization, learning, and memory.
How Much Deep Sleep You Actually Need
There are clearly many processes that rely on deep sleep to keep the body functioning as expected. This is why it’s one of the most essential phases of sleep (though all sleep phases are crucial for their own reasons).
Ideally, deep sleep should take up around 25% of your total sleep time. So, let’s say you’re an adult between the ages of 18 and 60. Most nights you might get the 7 hours of recommended sleep each night (for your age group), with some nights totaling 8 hours of sleep. If that is the case, you should be getting between 105 and 120 minutes of deep sleep each night.
Deep sleep is just a portion of your total sleep time, which means it will vary from person to person. This is why it’s best to focus on getting the right amount of total sleep to improve the quality of your sleep.
Signs You’re Not Getting Enough Deep Sleep
Since our bodies work hard during deep sleep, we don’t respond very well when it gets interrupted. This is especially the case for our brain. As a result, someone who wakes up from deep sleep is likely to experience some impairments in mental performance for up to an hour. This grogginess is known as sleep inertia, and it passes after some time.
Sleep inertia is just one of the indications that you aren’t getting enough deep sleep. Other signs that point toward poor deep sleep include:
- Wanting to stay in bed after initially waking up
- Having heavy eyelids that want to stay closed after initially waking up
- Feeling disoriented or in a dream-like state in the morning where you question if you’re still dreaming or not
- Being overly sensitive to bright light or engaging in a lot of movement
- Waking up with a headache
- Struggling to go about your morning routine (and even other parts of your day), either due to excessive fatigue, brain fog, or difficulty organizing or managing time
Keep in mind that these can point to other health concerns, so experiencing these problems after waking up does not definitively point toward needing more deep sleep. These signs are also not necessarily a cause for concern if you experience them only occasionally. If you consistently have any of these symptoms for five to six months, it’s best to consult a doctor to get to the true cause of your sleep difficulties.
How to Get More Deep Sleep: Proven Strategies That Work
Deep sleep is controlled by the brain and cannot be directly forced or guaranteed through one habit. The most practical approach is to improve your overall sleep duration, regularity, and quality so your body has enough uninterrupted time to move naturally through every sleep stage.
The strategies below focus on creating those conditions. Each subsection explains what to do, why it may support restful sleep, and how to make it part of your daily routine. Most adults should allow at least 7 hours of sleep per night, although individual needs vary.
| Strategy | What to Do | Why It May Help |
| Keep a consistent sleep and wake time | Go to bed and wake up at roughly the same time every day, including weekends, holidays, and vacations. | A regular schedule supports your body clock and helps your body move through each sleep stage more consistently. |
| Get morning light and dim the evenings | Get natural light early in the day, ideally before 10 a.m. Dim household lights and reduce screen use around one and a half to two hours before bed. | Morning light supports daytime alertness, while darker evenings help signal that it is time to feel sleepy. |
| Use calming sound to help you settle | Listen to calming music, nature sounds, white noise, or pink noise at a comfortable volume. | Soothing sound may help you relax and mask environmental noises that could interrupt your sleep. |
| Keep your bedroom cool, dark, and quiet | Maintain a comfortably cool room and use blackout curtains, an eye mask, earplugs, white noise, or a fan when needed. | A comfortable environment can reduce sleep disruptions and support better overall sleep quality. |
| Build a consistent wind-down routine | Choose calming activities such as reading, stretching, yoga, bathing, listening to a podcast, or practicing gratitude. Avoid stimulating activities and electronic devices. | Repeating the same relaxing activities can signal to your body that it is time to prepare for sleep. |
| Exercise regularly, but finish early | Exercise regularly using activities you enjoy, but avoid strenuous workouts during the final one and a half to two hours before bed when possible. | Regular physical activity may improve sleep quality and make it easier to fall asleep, while late intense exercise may increase alertness. |
| Watch caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine timing | Avoid caffeine for around six hours before bed, alcohol for around three hours, and nicotine for around five hours. | These substances may reduce sleep quality, increase restlessness, and interfere with normal sleep stages. |
| Mind your meals and late-night eating | Finish your last large meal around two to three hours before bed. Choose a small, nutritious snack if you are hungry later. | Avoiding heavy late meals may reduce digestive discomfort and prevent food-related processes from disrupting sleep. |
| Be smart about naps | Aim for a short nap of around 15 to 30 minutes. When taking a longer nap, keep it to approximately 90 minutes and avoid napping too late. | Shorter or properly timed naps may reduce grogginess and are less likely to interfere with nighttime sleep. |
| Manage stress before bed | Use relaxation methods such as guided imagery, meditation, gratitude, box breathing, or 4-7-8 breathing. | Reducing stress and physical tension before bed may make it easier to fall asleep and maintain better-quality sleep. |
Keep a Consistent Sleep and Wake Time
As we’ve mentioned, there is no surefire way to get more deep sleep. But what research does tell us is that consistency is the key to changing your sleep habits, which is the best way to promote more deep sleep in your cycle. This consistency most chiefly applies to your sleep-wake schedule. By adopting a regular ‘go to sleep’ time and a regular time you wake up, you’re offering your body a greater sense of predictability. One study actually found that sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration, meaning it’s best to keep a schedule as much as possible.
Many people may think this only applies to the weekdays when they need to regulate their sleep for a distinct purpose such as work or school. However, this consistency should be present within your whole life, including vacations, holidays, weekends, and odd or unexpected days off. This offers the most regularity in helping your body fully settle into sleep, set your body clock, and get the most amount of time possible in each sleep stage.
For adults between the ages of 18 and 60, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend you get at least 7 hours of sleep each night. This means an appropriate bedtime might be 10:00 p.m. and a fitting wake time that matches this would be 6:00 a.m. For anyone between the ages of 61 and 64, the suggested amount of sleep shifts slightly to 7-9 hours and again to 7-8 hours for anyone over the age of 65. Keep these ranges in mind as you slightly adjust your schedule across the lifespan.
Get Morning Light and Dim the Evenings
Exposure to light helps our bodies get a good sense of our surroundings. From there, our bodies form a circadian rhythm, which is a natural body clock that is intended to help us feel tired at night and more alert in the morning. A great way to offer our circadian rhythm a snapshot of what is going on around us is by exposing ourselves to natural light, especially in the morning. When our body senses this type of light around us, it serves as an obvious signal as to what time of day it is. This helps our body naturally produce less melatonin (which helps us feel sleepy) and more hormones that assist with alertness, movement, and level of arousal. It is especially beneficial to time this morning light as early as possible, ideally before 10 a.m.
To complement this natural morning light, it’s best to encourage (or mimic) darkness in the evening. For instance, it usually gets darker in the winter, so evenings will naturally be dark and signal our bodies toward sleep. We should capitalize on this by dimming the lights in the home and staying away from electronics (computers, phones, TVs, etc.) around 1.5-2 hours before bed. During the summer when it tends to stay light for later, we can use blackout curtains in the evening and continue to dim lights and minimize blue light exposure.
If we biologically sense it is morning at the right time, it stands to reason that we will also biologically understand when it is nighttime (in other words, when it is time to feel sleepy and fall asleep). When we’re able to fall asleep at the time we intend, we are likely to increase the amount of sleep we get, thereby increasing our chances of getting the right amount of deep sleep for our health.
Use Calming Sound to Help You Settle
Music has long been known as helpful for getting to sleep, but other types of sound have proven almost equally (if not, more) beneficial for this purpose. Classical music, instrumental songs, and nature sounds are some of the most common and evidence-based choices for sleep, though this is largely up to personal preference and taste. Soothing audio of any kind can help drown out environmental distractions such as other people talking or noises in the home. They can also help calm an anxious mind that struggles to settle down when it’s time for bed.
Pink noise and white noise, which are somewhat unique forms of ambient noise, can also be helpful. Pink noise is the larger category that nature sounds fall under while white noise is often described as static or humming from appliances like fans or fridges. Research supports the use of pink noise to ‘protect’ sleep, which means it will prevent you from waking to other sounds around you. When this happens, you don’t experience interruptions, meaning your sleep can progress from one stage to another, eventually getting to deep sleep.
Sound for Sleep by SoundSory is one option that offers a hassle-free music program for your sleeping pleasure. Sound for Sleep is a bone conduction pillow speaker with an integrated sleep playlist that does all the grunt work for you. This program can enhance relaxation at bedtime since it won’t stop prematurely and wake you during the night.
Keep Your Bedroom Cool, Dark, and Quiet
The environment also helps us get the right kind of sleep. It’s best to sleep in an area that is slightly cool. Experts say the best temperature range for good sleep quality is between 68 and 77 degrees Fahrenheit. This may be easier to achieve in the winter by turning the heat down while you can crack a window or put on a fan in the summer. You can layer blankets to adjust your body temperature according to comfort during the night. If you are getting better quality sleep, this allows you to spend the right amount of time in each sleep phase, enabling deep sleep to do its job for your brain and body.
Noises and light from around you can also interrupt your sleep. If you can’t make the environment quieter by closing the door or moving your sleep location, you can play some white noise (or use a fan or similar device) to drown it out or use earplugs. In terms of light, try blackout shades to darken the room. If this isn’t possible, you can use an eye mask or head cover to prevent your eyes from registering the light and waking you up.
Build a Consistent Wind-Down Routine
We’ve mentioned the role that habits and routines play in increasing your deep sleep. Many of these habits can be rolled into one bedtime (or wind-down) routine that helps prepare you for sleep. You can try several activities and habits in combination before settling on a solid routine that works for you. Some examples of good pre-bedtime activities to practice include reading a book, gently stretching, doing yoga, practicing a skincare routine, listening to a podcast, curling up with a weighted blanket, practicing gratitude, taking an extended bath or shower, coloring, or drinking a cup of a warm, caffeine-free beverage.
Once you get into the habit of practicing a few of these together, the activity itself will signal the body that it’s time for bed. Try a couple each night and take the time to reflect on how the task made you feel while you were doing it, how it made you feel as you were about to drift off to sleep, and any effects you noticed the next morning.
The only rules to follow when building a bedtime routine is to avoid overly stimulating activities (such as cleaning the house or doing work) and refrain from electronic devices.
Exercise Regularly, but Finish Early
Exercising regularly is another way to release natural, feel-good chemicals that help us better drift off to sleep. People who regularly exercise are more likely to experience improved sleep quality and take less time to fall asleep at night. Exercise helps stimulate the nervous system in the right ways during waking hours, which helps the body regulate its circadian rhythm.
Most people wonder what the best type of exercise is for encouraging better sleep, and the answer is that whatever you prefer tends to work the best. This may include running/jogging, interval training, biking, swimming, hiking, yoga, pilates, lifting weights, and more.
The only rule of thumb here is to avoid most exercise right before bedtime, especially strenuous activities such as weight lifting and interval training. Just as putting aside electronic devices to avoid blue light is advised in the 1.5-2 hours before bedtime, it’s best to stop exercising in around the same time frame each evening. However, if your schedule doesn’t allow you to exercise in any other time slot, the benefits of exercise typically outweigh the alternative (not exercising at all). Just do your best to avoid high-intensity exercises, since this can increase energy levels and make you more alert at a time when you should be more relaxed. This will throw off your bedtime, which makes it more difficult to achieve enough deep sleep in the time you have allotted for sleep.
Watch Caffeine, Alcohol, and Nicotine Timing
Many people rely on substances like alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine for enjoyment, relaxation, and sleep. But they may not recognize exactly the ways in which these chemicals impact the body’s processes. Studies show each of these substances can lead to poorer sleep quality, increased restlessness, and shorter duration of time spent in vital sleep stages.
This isn’t to say that you need to cut these out of your diet entirely, especially if they are something you enjoy and use in moderation. However, it’s best to adjust the timing during which you consume alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine to ensure they do not impact the sleep you get. Experts find that the following cutoff times are ideal to maintain good deep sleep:
- Avoid all forms of caffeine starting around 6 hours before bedtime
- Stop consuming alcohol around 3 hours before going to bed
- Refrain from nicotine (smoking, ingesting, etc.) around 5 hours before you want to sleep
Keep in mind that, while some of these substances (like alcohol) may appear to help with sleep due to effects such as drowsiness, they interrupt the overall course of your sleep. This means several hours after you eventually fall asleep, you may not be entering the sleep stages you should. This is especially true of deep sleep, since alcohol and similar substances tend to cause overall lighter sleep.
Mind Your Meals and Late-Night Eating
In tandem with avoiding certain substances, it’s best to stop eating according to when you will go to sleep. The body does a lot of work to digest your food after you eat it and it’s best to let gravity help with this. In other words, positions like standing, moving around, and sitting upright are most ideal to assist with moving your food through your digestive system after eating. These postures all allow your food to flow more easily where it needs to go and improve general circulation throughout the body.
The best timeline for having your last meal is between 2 and 3 hours before bed. We mentioned before that insulin (a hormone that helps regulate blood glucose) levels is one example of a natural chemical that ‘resets’ during the deep sleep period. Since meals often tend to spike blood glucose levels to some degree, even in healthy people, this blood glucose increase will interrupt insulin levels from regulating during the night as they need to for a healthy metabolism. This will lead to poorer sleep and may even contribute to the development of physical health problems, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and more.
Some people prefer to have a small snack before they go to bed, which may even be part of someone’s bedtime routine. This is perfectly acceptable, as long as it stays small and offers some nutrition, such as mixed nuts or a few slices of fresh fruit.
Be Smart About Naps
Many adults who don’t get good sleep rely on naps to get them through the day. Naps aren’t necessarily a bad thing, as they can be especially helpful for regulating the body clocks of shift workers. But they can actually contribute to nighttime sleep problems if you don’t go about them the right way.
In terms of time frame, 15 to 30 minutes is considered the best range for people aiming to take a short nap. Some people may turn toward longer naps as a way to recover sleep in certain instances, such as on days when they are especially fatigued or have a lot to get done and need to be alert. If you feel a longer nap is the better way to meet your sleep needs during the daytime, this is okay. But you need to consider the length of your nap as it relates to the length of each sleep cycle you go through.
It takes around 1 hour to move through light sleep and get to deep sleep. So if you take a 1-hour nap, you’re very likely to experience grogginess, disorientation, and overall lower cognitive performance in the 1 hour following your waking. For people looking to boost alertness and productivity as a result of napping, this defeats the purpose of taking a nap in the first place. Therefore, try to aim for 90 minutes as a maximum length for a long nap. This helps you achieve one cycle of deep sleep and prevents the feelings of sleep inertia we mentioned earlier.
Manage Stress Before Bed
Lastly, stress is a major contributor to poor sleep, meaning it inevitably will impact the amount of deep sleep someone gets. While it’s impossible and quite unrealistic to entirely avoid stress, we can prevent it from negatively impacting our sleep, health, and overall well-being.
Firstly, there are various lifestyle modifications that someone can make to lessen the impact of stress in their lives. Some examples include following a well-balanced diet as best you can, talking about your feelings and responses to stress, working through your emotions as they arise, and demonstrating good planning skills to maintain productivity and manage time.
In addition, several relaxation techniques can be beneficial when used before bed. Many of these are linked to stress reduction as well as improved sleep quality and overall well-being. Some examples include guided imagery (also known as visualization), which involves picturing a soothing image or scenery to instill relaxation.
Meditation can be used to remain mindful and focused on the present moment while expressing appreciation for all you have in life (the latter part of this is a concept called gratitude, which may even be used on its own to encourage relaxation). Deep breathing activities such as box breathing or 4-7-8 breathing can help regulate vital signs, which may increase irregularly in response to stress.
What Disrupts Your Deep Sleep
The amount of time you spend in deep sleep varies from person to person. However, there factors that are known to disrupt deep sleep, such as:
- Having less of a bodily desire for sleep, which may occur due to napping too often or too long during the day, spending non-sleeping time in bed (making our brain connect it with things other than sleep)
- Medical concerns, such as chronic pain, obstructive sleep apnea, depression, anxiety disorders, narcolepsy, dementia, or traumatic brain injury
- High stress levels, which lead to an imbalance of cortisol
- Late-day substance use, including alcohol or caffeine
- Medications such as opioids or benzodiazepines
- Aging, as older individuals naturally get less deep sleep
We can certainly aim to address some of these causes, such as properly treating medical conditions to minimize their impact on sleep, adjusting the timing of substance consumption, and better managing stress. However, it’s best to remember that a focus on overall sleep duration and quality will have a lot of carryover to increasing the amount of deep sleep you get.
How Deep Sleep Changes Across Your Life: From Childhood to Older Age
Our sleep changes quite a bit across our lives. For instance, infants and young children require a significant amount of sleep due to the amount of development their bodies and minds are undergoing. Sleep requirements get a bit lower once someone enters childhood, then again during the teenage years, and once more at the start of adulthood. Our need for sleep decreases slightly again as we become older adults.
The amount of time we spend in deep sleep also decreases as we mature. Older adults get less deep sleep, meaning they tend to wake up more often during the night than most other people do. This may be due to nighttime urination, chronic illness symptoms, ongoing pain, or feelings of anxiety. Some decline in the amount of deep sleep someone gets as they age is perfectly normal. But it’s not normal to constantly get unrefreshing sleep.
Do Sleep Trackers Actually Measure Deep Sleep?
Wearable health trackers have become more common, especially to measure indicators such as sleep. These trackers are great at sensing your vitals to determine when you are sleeping versus when you are awake, allowing them to give you a total sleep duration for each night. But the technology isn’t quite as precise as it needs to be to sense when you are in each sleep stage. They tend to overestimate or underestimate deep sleep duration, which can give someone inaccurate data about their sleep.
Readings also vary by device based on the technology and several other factors. As such, people should be aware of how unhelpful it is to overly focus on sleep measurements from a single night. It’s far more important to look at trends and habits over weeks and months to glean a good idea of your sleep needs.
Some people with health trackers tend to exhibit orthosomnia, which is an obsessive fixation on the amount of sleep and the quality of sleep they are getting. Research shows that up to 14% of individuals with health trackers may have orthosomnia. This leads them to hone in on the data from their tracker and make constant adjustments to try and optimize their sleep. This can be very stressful in and of itself, leading to sleep impairments simply from this behavior. Remember that health trackers are best for helping you (and, secondarily, your healthcare providers) identify patterns in your sleep. They are not designed to make diagnoses.
Can Supplements, Medications, or Therapy Help?
Supplements, medications, and therapy can all provide some help in getting more sleep. Low doses of melatonin taken regularly can assist with getting to sleep within 30 to 60 minutes of taking it. Magnesium is a natural supplement that eases muscle tension and can assist with relaxation, so if stress causes you some difficulty when getting to sleep, this may be worth trying out.
Medications may offer some relief for difficulty getting to sleep, but they cannot help you get more deep sleep and they often come along with side effects and can cause dependence. Certain types of therapy, especially talk therapy such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), are evidence-based for helping get to sleep.
If you are curious about any of these methods for getting better sleep (which may help you get more deep sleep), talk to your doctor. They can offer specific guidance based on your current health status and medical history. It’s best to discuss any method with your doctor before beginning for your own safety and well-being.
Sound for Sleep by Soundsory: A Calming, Screen-Free Way to Support Deeper Rest
Sound for Sleep by SoundSory is a bone conduction pillow speaker with an integrated therapeutic sleep program. This speaker smoothly slides under any pillow for easy listening. This type of technology offers a quiet experience that only the user can hear. This means its gentle vibrations go through the bones at the base of the skull, not disturbing others in the room or home.
With a built-in 8-night music program, you don’t need to get or tangle with a phone or playlist. Sound for Sleep has an 8-hour battery life, meaning its high-quality sound will last for the entire night. This program is ideal for people of all ages (children, adults, and the elderly) with sleep difficulties and a range of conditions such as autism, ADHD, anxiety, and sensory sensitivities. Sound for Sleep supports a regular wind-down routine and is a great way to more easily drift off to sleep. If you’re striving to incorporate soothing audio into your sleep routine, check it out today.
When to See a Doctor About Your Sleep
It’s important to recognize when sleep problems may require professional assistance. If you experience difficulty with sleep for more than 6 months or struggle with any of the following concerns, it’s time to speak with a healthcare professional:
- Low energy levels and excessive fatigue during the day
- Difficulty keeping up with work, socialization, school, and other responsibilities
- Major mood changes, such as irritability, anger, and depression
- Loss of interest in once enjoyable activities
- Ongoing difficulties with sleep despite making routine and lifestyle changes
Conclusion: Building Habits for Deeper Sleep
As we mentioned, you can’t force yourself to get more deep sleep. But there are steps you can take to improve your overall sleep quality and duration, which has an immediate impact on the amount of deep sleep you get. The best way to do this is by implementing new habits and routines gradually on a consistent basis. This helps protect your sleep schedule and offers a sense of consistency that your body and brain tend to respond best to.
Some examples of changes that can help you get more deep sleep include relaxation techniques, bedtime routines, mealtime adjustments, and refraining from substances after a certain point in the day. In addition, soothing audio, such as Sound for Sleep by SoundSory, tends to help you fall asleep.
FAQs About How to Get More Deep Sleep
How much deep sleep do I need each night?
Deep sleep should take up around 25% of your total sleep time. So if you are sleeping for 7 hours, you should be getting just over 100 minutes of deep sleep.
What’s the fastest way to increase deep sleep?
There is no fast way to increase deep sleep, as we cannot force our bodies to get more of this kind of sleep. The best way to encourage more deep sleep is by implementing habits and routines consistently.
Does exercise help you get more deep sleep?
Yes. Exercise, along with other regularly practiced habits and routines, can help promote more deep sleep in your sleep cycle.
Does alcohol reduce deep sleep?
Yes. Alcohol, caffeine, and other substances such as opioids and benzodiazepines are all known to reduce the amount of time someone spends in deep sleep.
Can sound or music help you get deeper sleep?
Yes! Music and soothing sounds can serve as one step in a bedtime routine that encourages more deep sleep.
Do sleep trackers accurately measure deep sleep?
No, not reliably. Sleep trackers do a good job of measuring the amount of time you spend awake versus the amount of time you spend asleep, but they are not a reliable way to track the amount of time you spend in each stage of sleep.
Why do I wake up tired even after enough hours of sleep?
Regardless of how much time you sleep for, it is common to wake up tired and groggy if you are not getting enough deep sleep.
When should I see a doctor about my deep sleep?
If you are waking up feeling unrefreshed, struggling to get through the day, and these concerns last for several weeks or more, it may be a good idea to consult with a doctor about your sleep and ability to get good deep sleep.
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Brittany Ferri, PhD, OTR/L
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