# A bedtime routine for adults

> A good bedtime routine for adults is a set of conditions and one cue, not a ritual that makes sleep happen: the same wake time every day, daylight early, caffeine and alcohol kept away from bedtime, a warm shower an hour or two before bed, a dim house, and a last half hour of something dull. Each part removes something that gets in sleep’s way. None of it is a test to pass.

Source: https://dreamsheeps.space/bedtime-routine
Published: 2026-10-14 · Updated: 2026-10-14

## Does a bedtime routine help adults sleep?

Probably a little, and mostly through its parts. The routine as a whole — the same steps in the same order every night — has been tested in young children rather than adults. In a 2009 trial, 405 mothers of children aged 7 months to 3 years were randomly assigned either to carry on as usual or to follow a set nightly routine for two weeks. With the routine, the children fell asleep faster and woke less in the night, and their mothers’ mood improved (Mindell and colleagues, 2009).

We could not find the same kind of trial in adults. Of the 52 records in Europe PMC with “bedtime routine” or “pre-sleep routine” in the title, nearly all are about young children, and the few about adults describe what people do rather than testing whether it helps (searched October 2026). What has been studied in adults are the pieces — a regular schedule, light, caffeine, alcohol, a warm bath, screens, a to-do list, relaxation — one at a time.

So this page goes through them in turn: what each part has behind it, and which parts are only common sense. The case for doing them as a routine, in the same order each evening, is a modest one. Repeated steps can plausibly become a signal that the day is over, through the same kind of learning that makes [the bed a cue](https://dreamsheeps.space/learn/bed-is-a-cue) — but that is a reasonable extension of the evidence, not a finding.

## What does a sensible bedtime routine look like?

Here is one example, for someone who gets up at 7 and is usually asleep by about 11. It illustrates the parts above; it is not a prescription. Move the times to fit your life, and leave out anything that does not apply.

**An example evening, built from the parts with evidence behind them. Times are illustrations.**

| When | What | Why |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 7:00, every day | Get up at the same time, with weekends close to it | Regular sleep timing matters for health and performance (Sletten and colleagues, 2023) |
| Before 9:00 | Daylight outdoors: a walk, breakfast outside, the commute on foot | Morning light sets the clock ([light is the clock](https://dreamsheeps.space/learn/light-is-the-clock)) |
| Early afternoon | The last coffee of the day | Caffeine’s half-life is five to six hours ([caffeine has a very long tail](https://dreamsheeps.space/learn/caffeine-tail)) |
| Evening meal | If you drink, earlier and less, not a nightcap | Alcohol breaks up the second half of the night ([alcohol is a sedative](https://dreamsheeps.space/learn/alcohol-is-sedation)) |
| 9:00 to 9:30 | A warm shower or bath | One to two hours before bed went with falling asleep sooner (Haghayegh and colleagues, 2019) |
| After that | Lamps instead of ceiling lights | Evening light pushes the clock later |
| About 10:30 | Five minutes writing tomorrow’s to-do list, specifically | A specific list at bedtime went with falling asleep faster (Scullin and colleagues, 2018) |
| Then | Something dull: a familiar book, quiet audio, the screen put away | Nothing to finish and nothing to follow |
| When sleepy | Bed. If lying awake turns into a struggle, get up for a while | Keeps the bed a cue for sleep ([the bed is a cue](https://dreamsheeps.space/learn/bed-is-a-cue)) |

Two things about it matter more than the details. It is short enough to survive a late dinner or a night away from home. And none of it is checked: there is no score for having done it, and no step that fails if it is skipped.

## Should you go to bed at the same time every night?

The time that matters most is the one you get up. A 2023 consensus panel of the National Sleep Foundation, working from 63 published studies, agreed that regular timing of sleep matters for health, safety and performance (Sletten and colleagues, 2023). In a 2017 study, 61 students kept sleep diaries for 30 days. In the least regular fifth of them, the evening rise in melatonin — the body clock’s signal that night has begun — came after midnight on average, at 00:08, against 21:32 in the most regular fifth: more than two and a half hours later. The irregular sleepers also had flatter daily patterns of light, and a model in the same paper put most of the difference down to that (Phillips and colleagues, 2017). It was an observational study, so it shows a link rather than a cause.

A fixed bedtime is the weaker half of the advice. When researchers have put adults without sleep problems on strict schedules, little changed — and the treatments with the best evidence ask for something different: the same wake time every morning, and bed when sleepy rather than at a set hour (Irish and colleagues, 2015). The idea is that a steady morning lets the evening find its own level.

That is also why a long lie-in costs more than it seems to: a wake time that moves by three hours at the weekend moves the body clock with it ([light is the clock](https://dreamsheeps.space/learn/light-is-the-clock)). When the week has been short of sleep, though, the same panel agreed that catching up at the weekend may help. Regularity is a direction, not a rule to fail.

## What should you do about light in the morning and evening?

Get outside early, and dim the house late. Morning daylight does most of the work of setting the body clock, and outdoor light, even on an overcast day, is far brighter than a lit room. Evening light pushes the clock later, and the ceiling light matters more than the phone. [Light is the clock](https://dreamsheeps.space/learn/light-is-the-clock) explains both halves.

In practice that means a walk, breakfast outside or the commute on foot in the first hour or two after waking, and, in the evening, lamps instead of overhead lights in the rooms you use.

## When should you stop caffeine and alcohol?

Earlier than feels necessary, for both. Caffeine’s half-life is roughly five to six hours, so the afternoon coffee is still working at bedtime, and its effect on measured sleep can show up before you notice it ([caffeine has a very long tail](https://dreamsheeps.space/learn/caffeine-tail)). Alcohol shortens the time it takes to lose consciousness and then breaks up the second half of the night ([alcohol is a sedative, not a sleep aid](https://dreamsheeps.space/learn/alcohol-is-sedation)).

A 2015 review of the evidence behind each of the usual sleep rules found the clearest effects for large doses of caffeine close to bedtime, and that even a little alcohol shortly before bed can disturb that night’s sleep. It was less certain about smaller amounts earlier in the day, and found tolerance and individual sensitivity muddying both (Irish and colleagues, 2015). The rule of thumb is plain: coffee in the morning and early afternoon, and if you drink, earlier and less rather than as a nightcap.

## Does a warm shower or bath before bed help?

It has better evidence than most of the routine. A 2019 review of 17 studies found that a bath or shower in water of 40 to 42.5 °C, taken one to two hours before bed for as little as 10 minutes, went with falling asleep sooner and with better-rated sleep (Haghayegh and colleagues, 2019). Its authors’ explanation is that it makes you cooler: warm skin sheds heat once you are out of the water, and sleep comes on the falling edge of body temperature ([you have to cool down first](https://dreamsheeps.space/learn/cool-down-first)).

The timing, the shower-or-bath question, and who should take care with hot water are in [a hot shower before bed](https://dreamsheeps.space/blog/hot-shower-before-bed).

## Do screens before bed ruin sleep?

Less than the warnings suggest, and less through blue light than they claim. In the laboratory, hours of reading on a tablet made people take a little longer to fall asleep and pushed their body clocks later; Night Shift made no measurable difference to sleep in a trial of iPhone users; and whether blue-light glasses help sleep is, so far, unknown. The most consistent thing a screen does is keep you up: given a tablet and a free choice, people go to bed later.

[Screens before bed](https://dreamsheeps.space/blog/screens-before-bed) goes through those studies, and what to do short of giving the phone up.

## What if your mind races at bedtime?

Deal with tomorrow before bed rather than in it. In a 2018 sleep-laboratory study, 57 healthy young adults spent five minutes before lights out writing either a to-do list for the coming days or a list of what they had already done. The to-do group fell asleep significantly faster, and the more specific the list, the faster they fell asleep (Scullin and colleagues, 2018). It was one night, in people without sleep problems, and it costs five minutes and a pen.

[Racing thoughts at night](https://dreamsheeps.space/racing-thoughts-at-night) covers that and the rest of a busy mind’s evening, including what to do once you are in bed.

## Does relaxation belong in a bedtime routine?

Yes, if it is practised rather than performed. Relaxation therapy, such as progressive muscle relaxation, is one of the techniques the American Academy of Sleep Medicine suggests for chronic insomnia even when used on its own (Edinger and colleagues, 2021). One account of how it works is that relaxing is a form of focused attention, and focused attention leaves no room for the mental arousal that keeps people awake (as Irish and colleagues, 2015, summarise it).

Done nightly as a habit, it is the quietest step of the evening. Done as a check on whether you are relaxed yet, it becomes another task. [How to fall asleep](https://dreamsheeps.space/how-to-fall-asleep) ranks the in-bed techniques by their evidence.

## What should the last half hour before bed be?

Something dull, in low light, with no next step. No one has trialled a particular last half hour, as far as we can find, so this part is common sense assembled from the rest: no deadline, no screen deciding when you stop, nothing with a cliffhanger, nothing you are trying to finish. A familiar book, folding the washing, quiet audio you have heard before — the point is to give attention somewhere to rest without giving it a reason to stay up. That is the whole argument for [plotless sleep stories](https://dreamsheeps.space/plotless-sleep-stories).

Then go to bed when you are sleepy, not when the routine says it is time. If lying there turns into a struggle, the oldest behavioural advice applies: get up, go somewhere dim, do something undemanding, and come back when sleepy, so that the bed stays a cue for sleep rather than for lying awake ([the bed is a cue](https://dreamsheeps.space/learn/bed-is-a-cue)). Stimulus control, as it is called, is another technique the 2021 guideline suggests on its own (Edinger and colleagues, 2021).

## Can a bedtime routine make sleep worse?

Yes, when it turns into a performance. Sleep is one of the few things effort makes worse: noticing it, intending it and trying to produce it are the steps by which poor sleep takes hold ([why trying to sleep keeps you awake](https://dreamsheeps.space/learn/trying-to-sleep)). A routine of fifteen steps, each one ticked off, is a nightly exam that ends with the question it was meant to make unnecessary — did it work? That is the trap in [sleepmaxxing](https://dreamsheeps.space/blog/sleepmaxxing), the trend for optimising every variable of the night, and in [orthosomnia](https://dreamsheeps.space/blog/orthosomnia), the name for losing sleep over a tracker’s verdict on it.

The same goes for the add-ons. [Sleep supplements](https://dreamsheeps.space/sleep-supplements), [weighted blankets](https://dreamsheeps.space/blog/weighted-blankets) and [mouth taping](https://dreamsheeps.space/blog/mouth-taping) each have a page here on what the research found; none of them replaces the dull basics, and every one added is another thing to get right. The list most routines grow out of, [sleep hygiene](https://dreamsheeps.space/blog/sleep-hygiene), works better as a menu than as a set of rules.

A useful test: if skipping a step would make you anxious, drop it for a week and see what happens.

## When is a routine not enough?

When trouble sleeping has gone on most nights for months and is affecting your days. A routine is groundwork, not a treatment: for chronic insomnia, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine suggests that sleep hygiene not be used on its own (Edinger and colleagues, 2021). The recommended first treatment is cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), by the American College of Physicians (Qaseem and colleagues, 2016) and the Academy alike. [How to fall asleep](https://dreamsheeps.space/how-to-fall-asleep) says what a course involves.

And if you snore loudly, stop breathing in your sleep, or are very sleepy in the day despite enough time in bed, that is a conversation for a doctor rather than a change of routine. The steps on this page are for an ordinary evening, never a substitute for care.

## Sources

1. [Mindell, Telofski, Wiegand & Kurtz (2009) — A nightly bedtime routine: impact on sleep in young children and maternal mood. Sleep 32(5), 599–606](https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/32.5.599)
2. [Sletten et al. (2023) — The importance of sleep regularity: a consensus statement of the National Sleep Foundation sleep timing and variability panel. Sleep Health 9(6), 801–820](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2023.07.016)
3. [Phillips et al. (2017) — Irregular sleep/wake patterns are associated with poorer academic performance and delayed circadian and sleep/wake timing. Scientific Reports 7(1), 3216](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-03171-4)
4. [Irish, Kline, Gunn, Buysse & Hall (2015) — The role of sleep hygiene in promoting public health: a review of empirical evidence. Sleep Medicine Reviews 22, 23–36](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2014.10.001)
5. [Haghayegh et al. (2019) — Before-bedtime passive body heating by warm shower or bath to improve sleep: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Sleep Medicine Reviews 46, 124–135](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2019.04.008)
6. [Scullin, Krueger, Ballard, Pruett & Bliwise (2018) — The effects of bedtime writing on difficulty falling asleep: a polysomnographic study comparing to-do lists and completed activity lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 147(1), 139–146](https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000374)
7. [Edinger et al. (2021) — Behavioral and psychological treatments for chronic insomnia disorder in adults: an American Academy of Sleep Medicine clinical practice guideline. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine 17(2), 255–262](https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.8986)
8. [Qaseem et al. (2016) — Management of chronic insomnia disorder in adults: a clinical practice guideline from the American College of Physicians. Annals of Internal Medicine](https://doi.org/10.7326/M15-2175)

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Sheeps is not a routine coach: no checklist, no streaks, nothing to tick off. It is for the last few minutes of a routine — a new plotless story, written for you, that gives your attention something harmless to hold, with sentences that shrink, pauses that grow, and silence at the end. Sheeps on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6749510901