How to sleep through the night

Sleeping through in one piece is rarer than people think. Still, here you are, awake again: not groggy, not half-asleep, but properly awake, with the duvet too warm and the landing light under the door. You lie still and wait.

The waiting is the problem. Before long you've been to the loo twice, checked the time, started on tomorrow and argued with yourself about the thermostat. The last thing you remember is deciding not to look at the clock again.

You haven't done anything wrong. This isn't rare. The Royal College of Psychiatrists says most people wake a few times a night.

The short wakes just feel longer than they are, and the long ones feel like the whole night. By the next afternoon you've put the milk in the cupboard and lost the thread of the same conversation twice.

Why nobody really sleeps through

Sleep runs in cycles of about 90 minutes. The first couple are heavy with deep sleep; the later ones are light sleep and dreaming, which you surface from easily. A good sleeper surfaces, turns over and is gone again, without ever filing it as a wake.

A review of 65 studies, covering 3,577 healthy people, found the minutes awake after falling asleep rise through adult life. So the 2am wake isn't new wiring. It's ordinary wiring with less padding.

What turns a brief surface into a 40-minute wake is what happens in the gap. Light in your eyes, a clock to read, a bladder to answer, a worry to pick up. Those are the things you can change.

If bedtime is easy and only the second half goes wrong, fall asleep fine but can't stay asleep explains why the two halves differ.

Why trying harder doesn't work

Trying to force it doesn't work either. Lying rigid and willing yourself under keeps you checking whether it's worked yet, and checking is a kind of waking. The harder you try at 3am, the longer it takes.

Lying there awake also strengthens the link between bed and being awake, so the Royal College of Psychiatrists says not to stay in bed if you're struggling to sleep. Step five below comes from that.

How to stay asleep all night

1. Keep the same wake time, every day. Your body clock is set by when you get up and see light. It's the clock that holds you under in the second half of the night. The NHS says not to sleep in after a bad night, however tempting. A lie-in is how one bad night becomes a bad week. Keep the weekday alarm on Saturday as well, or no more than an hour later, and get up to it.
2. Tighten the sleep window. If you're in bed for eight and a half hours and sleeping six and a half, the loose two hours are where the waking happens. Sleep restriction trims time in bed to roughly the sleep you get, then widens it again as the night knits together. Across eight randomised trials, it had a large effect on time awake in the night and on insomnia severity. The Royal College of Psychiatrists' version is gentle. Each week, push bedtime back by a quarter of an hour. Stop when you're dropping off inside about 20 minutes and awake for less than about 20 across the night.
3. Set the room up for 3am, not 11pm. At bedtime the room feels fine; the test is what it's like four hours later. Dark enough that you can't read the clock, and cool enough that you'd want the duvet. The phone charges somewhere else. The NHS lists noise, light and a room that's too hot or cold among the common causes of broken sleep. A clock you can read starts the arithmetic, and the arithmetic is the wake. If a noise machine helps you, keep it. A 2021 review of 38 studies rated the evidence for continuous noise very low: some found it helped, others that it disrupted sleep.
4. Move the last drink earlier. The advice from Guy's and St Thomas' is plain. Have your last drink of the evening earlier rather than cutting fluids overall, and keep to the usual six to eight cups a day. Go easy on caffeine and alcohol, which irritate the bladder as well as disturbing sleep. The NHS puts tea, coffee and alcohol at least six hours before bed. If you're still up to the loo most nights once you've tried this, it's worth a GP conversation; the causes are often treatable.
5. When you surface, don't fight it. Keep your eyes closed, don't check the time, and don't pick up the phone; the light alone will wake you further. Still awake and starting to fret? Get up. The Royal College of Psychiatrists says to go to another room, do something relaxing in low light, and come back when you're sleepy. It feels backwards and it works. How to get back to sleep has the half hour in detail.
6. Don't nap, and don't lie in. A nap spends tonight's sleep pressure in advance, and a lie-in pushes the clock later; the NHS says no to both. If you're desperate by 3pm, a walk outside does more than a doze on the sofa. The Royal College suggests bright light, fresh air and movement as the way to stay awake.
7. Leave alcohol out of the evening. It helps you drop off and then wakes you; the Royal College of Psychiatrists says plainly that you'll probably wake in the night after it. Six hours before bed is the NHS line. If the waking began around the time the weeknight glass did, we'd start here.

When waking needs a GP

See your GP if you snore loudly, wake choking or gasping, or feel very sleepy most days. Those are the Royal College of Psychiatrists' signs of sleep apnoea, which is checked with an overnight study, often done at home.

See one too if you're up to the loo several times a night despite the changes above. And see one if the broken sleep has gone on for months, or is making it hard to cope; the NHS says the same. None of that is a habit problem.

What the evidence can't promise

No habit gets you to zero wakes; the trials count minutes awake, not nights slept through. The eight sleep-restriction trials were small, six of them at high risk of bias, and few followed people beyond three months. And a tighter window usually feels worse before it feels better, which is when it's tempting to stop.

If bedtime is a problem too, how to fall asleep and stay asleep covers both halves. And how to sleep better ranks every habit by its evidence.

The first change is the smallest: make the clock unreadable from the pillow tonight, and get up at the usual time tomorrow whatever happens. A week of that will tell you which of the seven is doing most of the damage.