How to Build a Bedtime Routine That Fits Your Life

A bedtime routine is a short, repeated run of ordinary actions that tells your body the day is closing. It does not need candles, a special tea or ninety spare minutes. It needs to be something you can do on a dull Tuesday when you are tired and a little behind, because that is when it has to work.

The steps below build a routine from the constraints you already have: when you must get up, when your evening really ends, and who else is in the house.

Step 1: Fix the morning first

Most people start by choosing a bedtime. It is usually easier to start at the other end. The NHS advice on insomnia is to get up at the same time every day and to go to bed only when you feel sleepy. The US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) adds that weekday and weekend schedules are best kept within about an hour of each other, because long lie-ins can unsettle the body clock.

So write down the time you need to be up on your earliest regular day. That is your anchor. Bedtime will settle around it.

Step 2: Decide how long your wind-down can honestly be

The NHS suggests winding down for at least an hour before bed. The NHLBI describes the hour before bed as a time for quiet activity, without hard exercise or bright screens. That is the guidance. Your evening may not have a free hour in it.

Look at a normal week and find the point where your obligations actually stop: the last work message, the children asleep, the kitchen done. If that leaves thirty minutes, plan for thirty. A shorter wind-down that happens most nights is a better starting point than a perfect one that happens twice a month.

Step 3: Choose two or three cues and keep their order

The content matters less than the repetition. NHS Every Mind Matters lists reading, calming music, podcasts, meditation and breathing exercises as options. The NHLBI mentions a hot bath or relaxation techniques. Pick things you would do anyway and put them in a fixed order, for example:

• lights down in the living room, then tomorrow’s bag packed;
• wash, teeth, night clothes;
• ten pages of a book in bed, or one episode of a quiet podcast.

If building any new habit feels like one thing too many, our piece on building a small habit explains how to attach a new action to something you already do.

Step 4: Give tomorrow a place to go

A routine fails fastest when your head is still running through tomorrow. NHS Every Mind Matters suggests writing a to-do list for the next day before bed if you tend to lie awake worrying, and writing worries down or talking them over with someone you trust. Healthdirect, Australia’s government health information service, calls the period before bed a “buffer zone” and suggests keeping problem-solving and planning out of it.

In practice: do the list before the wind-down starts, on paper, somewhere outside the bedroom. Then the list holds the thought so you do not have to. There is more on this in creating a calmer transition from work to bed.

Step 5: Make one decision about your phone

The NHLBI explains that bright artificial light late in the day, including from phones and televisions, can suppress the evening release of melatonin, a hormone thought to promote sleep. Guidance on timing differs a little: NHS Every Mind Matters suggests avoiding phones, tablets and computers for about an hour before bed, while the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests switching devices off at least 30 minutes before.

You do not have to choose between an hour and nothing. Choose one rule you will keep. Some that people find workable:

• the phone charges outside the bedroom, with a cheap alarm clock by the bed;
• the phone stays in the room but goes face down and on silent once you are in bed;
• audio only after a set time: a podcast or music, screen off.

Step 6: Plan for the night it does not work

Some nights you will do everything and still lie awake. NHS Every Mind Matters advises not trying to force sleep. If you are still awake after about 20 minutes, it suggests getting up, sitting somewhere comfortable and doing something relaxing, such as reading or listening to quiet music, then going back to bed when you feel sleepy.

Decide in advance where you will sit and what you will do. A chair, a lamp and a book already in place make this much easier than working it out at 2am.

Step 7: Run it for two weeks, then adjust

Keep the routine as it is for a fortnight before judging it. Short notes help: what time the wind-down started, whether you kept your phone rule, how you felt the next day. A simple sleep diary gives you a layout for this. Then change one thing at a time.

What a routine will not do

A routine makes sleep more likely. It does not guarantee it, and it does not treat a sleep disorder. The NHS advises seeing a GP if changing your sleep habits has not helped, if you have had trouble sleeping for months, or if poor sleep is making it hard to cope with daily life.