

“The time of night when you sleep makes a significant difference in terms of the structure and quality of your sleep,” Matt Walker Ph.D., head of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, told TIME. Going to bed too late may affect the quality of your sleep, which is unfortunate news for night owls, insomniacs, and shift workers.

So if your alarm goes off at 6 AM, try to get to sleep no later than 11:30. He suggests looking at your ideal wake time and counting back 7.5 hours for a recommended bedtime. According to his website, the average sleep cycle is 90 minutes long and includes both deep non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep to REM sleep.Ī typical night’s sleep involves five cycles - or 7.5 total hours. Breus, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and sleep specialist, recommends using his “sleep calculator” formula to find your ideal bedtime. Is there such a thing as an ideal bedtime? Experts say the best time to go to bed depends on what your schedule is like both during the evening and the following morning.
