How to Improve Sleep Quality

When most people talk about sleep, they often talk about how many hours of sleep they’re getting each night – also known as sleep quantity. For example, you’ve likely heard your parents or doctor suggest getting anywhere between 7-9 hours of sleep each night. This would be considered your sleep quantity.

While that measurement is extremely important to how restful and restorative your sleep patterns are, it’s not the only thing that matters – there are other factors at play. Just because you get 7-9 hours of sleep doesn’t mean you’re getting the most out of your sleep – you could be leaving a lot on the table (or bed).



In addition to sleep quantity, we also need to be focusing on sleep quality – which refers to how well you’re sleeping during those 7-9 hours each night. Don’t worry, we’ll teach you everything you need to know – including how sleep quality is measured and how to improve sleep quality on a nightly basis.

What is Sleep Quality?

Sleep quality is a measurement of how well you’re sleeping on a daily basis – opposed to how long or often you’re sleeping. While you want to get your 7-9 hours of sleep, you also want to make sure those 7-9 hours are restful, restorative, and undistracted. Without a good night’s rest, you won’t feel refreshed.

Measuring sleep quality is much more complex than measuring sleep quantity, but it can largely be broken down into four primary categories:

• Sleep Latency - how long it takes you to fall asleep
• Sleep Waking - how often you wake up after falling asleep
• Wakefulness - how long you’re awake after falling asleep
• Sleep Efficiency - how long you spend asleep through the night

The easiest way to calculate your sleep quality is to subtract the amount of time it takes to fall asleep and the amount of time you spend awake during the night from the total amount of time you spend in bed – then divide that number by the total amount of time spent in bed and multiply the number by 100.

For example: 420 minutes (total time in bed) – 20 minutes (time it took to fall asleep) – 15 minutes (time you spent awake after falling asleep) = 385 minutes (actual sleep time). Divide 385 (actual sleep time) / 420 (total time in bed) = 0.9167. Multiply that by 100 and you get a sleep quality of 91.67% – not bad!

How to Get Better Quality Sleep

Taking your calculation from above into consideration, you should be aiming for a sleep quality above 85%. It also shouldn’t be taking you longer than 30 minutes to fall asleep, you shouldn’t be waking up more than once after falling asleep, and it shouldn’t take you longer than 20 minutes to fall back asleep.



How many times do you get a full night’s rest (7-9 hours), but feel like you slept 3-4 hours? If this happens often, then you might not be getting the best quality sleep possible – don’t worry, a strong majority of us struggle with this on a nightly basis. The good news is sleep quality can be fixed and we’re here to help!

1. Stay in Touch With Your Circadian Rhythm

Circadian rhythm is your body’s natural sleep-wake cycle. You can better optimize this by going to bed and waking up at the same times every night (maintain a good sleep schedule), avoid sleeping in (yes, even on the weekend), take shorter naps (when needed), eat a healthy meal when you wake up, and keep yourself active after dinner to help you stay asleep.

2. Strike a Balance With Light Exposure

The body produces more melatonin – also known as the sleep chemical – when it’s dark and less when exposed to light. That’s why you should maximize light exposure during the day to help keep you awake, but limit light exposure at night before falling asleep – yes, that means limiting screen time, as well.

3. Engage in Regular Physical Activity

Staying physically active on a regular basis can help you stay awake during the day and help you fall asleep faster at night. Just make sure you’re not working out or exercising too close to your bedtime – this can actually harm your quality of sleep. Instead, try opting for a morning or daytime exercise routine.

4. Eat a Healthy and Well-Balanced Diet

Eating plays a part in virtually every known body function – including sleep. To put your body in a position to succeed, make sure you eat enough fruits and vegetables – but avoid foods high in sugar or refined carbs, caffeine, nicotine, large meals at night, alcohol before bed, and too many liquids during the day.

5. Learn Effective Stress Management Techniques

Believe it or not, all that stress, worry, and anger that you carry around all day will find its way into your night as well – despite many people acting like sleep is the answer. If you want a good night’s sleep, relieve yourself of that stress prior to going to bed – otherwise, it’ll wake you up in the middle of the night.

6. Create a Quality Sleep Environment for Yourself

Another factor that plays a role in sleep quality is your sleep environment. To ensure you fall asleep in a proper environment, make sure you keep your room cool, dark, and quiet. The best temperature to fall asleep in is between 62 and 67 degrees fahrenheit – and the darker you can get the room, the better.

7. Learn How to Fall Back Asleep After Waking Up

Waking up in the middle of the night is normal and, while you want to limit how often that happens, you also want to limit the amount of time it takes you to fall back asleep. To help counter this, make sure you focus on staying relaxed and staying out of your head. The more you think about it, the harder it’ll be.

8. Make Sure You Enter REM Sleep

REM sleep, also known as rapid eye movement sleep, is the sleep stage characterized by dreaming. It usually occurs roughly 90 minutes after you fall asleep and happens in multiple stages. Following the tips above will help ensure you enter REM sleep, which is vital to getting the most out of your sleep routine.