Sleep hygiene is a clinical term for the habits and environmental factors that set you up for good sleep. Think of it as the foundation — without it, no supplement, app, or mattress will fix your nights. Here's the complete checklist.
Your Bedroom Environment
Keep your room cool. 65–68°F (18–20°C) is the sweet spot. Your body needs to drop in temperature to initiate sleep, and a cool room helps that happen.
Make it truly dark. Even small amounts of light — a charging LED, streetlight through curtains — can suppress melatonin. Use blackout curtains or a quality sleep mask. Cover any electronics with tape.
Eliminate noise or mask it. If you can't control environmental noise, use a white noise machine or fan. Earplugs work too. Consistency matters — your brain habituates to steady sound but wakes to sudden changes.
Reserve your bed for sleep. No working, eating, scrolling, or watching TV in bed. This trains your brain to associate the bed with one thing: sleep.
Your Evening Routine
Set a screens-off time. 45–60 minutes before bed, put all screens away. Blue light is the issue, but stimulating content is equally disruptive.
Dim your lights after sunset. Bright overhead lights signal "daytime" to your brain. Switch to lamps, candles, or smart bulbs set to warm tones in the evening.
Avoid large meals within 3 hours of bed. Digestion raises core temperature and can cause discomfort. If you need a snack, keep it light — a banana, small handful of almonds, or chamomile tea.
Skip alcohol as a sleep aid. Alcohol may help you fall asleep but destroys sleep quality. It suppresses REM sleep, causes fragmented sleep in the second half of the night, and worsens snoring and sleep apnea.
Do a brain dump. Spend 5 minutes writing down tomorrow's tasks, worries, or unfinished thoughts. This reduces the rumination that keeps people awake.
Your Daytime Habits
Get morning sunlight. 10–15 minutes of outdoor light within an hour of waking sets your circadian clock for the entire day. This is the single most underrated sleep habit.
Exercise regularly, but time it right. Regular exercise dramatically improves sleep quality. However, intense workouts within 2–3 hours of bedtime can be stimulating. Morning or afternoon training is ideal.
Cut caffeine after noon. Even if you "can fall asleep after coffee," caffeine reduces deep sleep quality. Your subjective sense of sleeping fine doesn't match what's happening in your brain.
Limit naps to 20 minutes before 2 PM. Long or late naps steal sleep pressure from nighttime. Short power naps are fine if they don't affect your ability to fall asleep at night.
Your Sleep Timing
Keep a consistent schedule. Same wake time every day, including weekends. A 30-minute window is fine. Beyond that, you're disrupting your circadian rhythm.
Track your sleep. You don't need a wearable — a simple morning log of bedtime, wake time, and sleep quality gives you actionable data within a week.
How to Use This Checklist
Don't try to implement all 15 at once. Pick the 3 you're worst at and focus there for two weeks. Track the results. Then add more. Small, consistent improvements beat dramatic overnight changes every time.
SleepBetter.ai helps you build and track your sleep hygiene habits. Simple, fast, effective. Available on iOS.