Naps

What It Is

The naps you take during the day, and whether to give them up.

Why It Matters

A familiar piece of sleep advice is to stop napping, on the idea that sleep taken in the afternoon is taken from the night. Skipping a nap may make little to no difference to how long you sleep that night. In a randomized laboratory study that recorded the following night with polysomnography, healthy older adults showed no clear difference in how long or how efficiently they slept between a night after an afternoon nap and a night after staying awake, so their sleep across the whole day went up.¹ A trial in young athletes who already napped found much the same at home.²

The trials are small and do not all point the same way. In college students, nights after a nap were shorter on average, by an amount the trial could not tell apart from no difference,³ and in the laboratory study people took a little longer to fall asleep after the nap.¹ Its authors also point to a smaller study of a two-week nap routine that recorded shorter, less efficient nights.¹ Each of these trials tested a single nap rather than giving up a daily nap habit, and none included people with a diagnosed sleep disorder.^1–3

If you nap and your nights are fine, there is no need to give it up. If your nights are short, protect a long enough window for sleep and move your bedtime earlier rather than dropping the nap, which may buy you little at night. If you often lie awake at night, these trials do not speak to you; see the guidance on time in bed. Keep naps to the afternoon, as in the trials here,^1–3 since an evening nap may cost more.¹

• 1 Campbell, S.S. et al. (2005). Effects of a Nap on Nighttime Sleep and Waking Function in Older Subjects. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-5415.2005.53009.x
• 2 Boukhris, O. et al. (2025). The Influence of 25- and 90-Min Afternoon Nap Opportunities on Subsequent Nighttime Sleep in Student Athletes. Journal of Sleep Research. doi.org/10.1111/jsr.70120
• 3 Lau, E.Y.Y. et al. (2015). Rapid-Eye-Movement-Sleep (REM) Associated Enhancement of Working Memory Performance after a Daytime Nap. PLOS ONE. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125752