How to sleep better: 15 evening habits to fall asleep faster

Why the evening matters

Good sleep starts before bedtime.

We often think sleep begins when we switch off the light. In reality, it is prepared hours earlier. Two mechanisms decide how easily you will fall asleep.

Your body clock, first. It sets the body to a cycle of about 24 hours, and it takes its cue mainly from light. In the evening, as the light fades, the brain releases melatonin, the hormone that tells the body night is coming. Too much light, especially bright light, delays that signal.

Sleep pressure, second. The longer you stay awake, the more the need for sleep builds up. A late nap or an afternoon coffee skews that counter, and sleepiness arrives too late.

Evening habits act on these two levers. None of them is magic on its own. It is their sum, repeated every evening, that makes the difference after a few weeks. There is no need to adopt them all at once: pick three, keep them up for two weeks, then add more.

The 15 habits

The 15 evening habits at a glance.

Here is the full list, in the order of the day. Each one is explained in detail further down.

Habits 1 to 3

Regular hours, the foundation of it all.

1. Get up at a set time. This is the most underrated habit and the most powerful. Your wake-up time sets your body clock far more than your bedtime does. Getting up at 7 am on weekdays and 11 am on Sunday means giving yourself a little jet lag every Monday. Try to keep the gap under an hour, even at weekends.

2. Get daylight in the morning. A few minutes outside after getting up, even under a grey sky, send your body clock a much stronger signal than indoor lighting. A coffee on the balcony, walking to work, breakfast by a window: morning light helps you feel sleepy in the evening.

3. No long or late naps. A short nap of 10 to 20 minutes in the early afternoon refreshes you without eating into the night. Any longer, or after 4 pm, it lowers sleep pressure and delays falling asleep. If you sleep badly, drop it for a few weeks to see the difference.

How many hours of sleep? The US National Sleep Foundation recommends 7 to 9 hours for adults and 7 to 8 hours over 65. The best indicator is still how you feel during the day.

Habits 4 to 6

Coffee, alcohol, dinner: what happens at the table.

4. Your last coffee before 2 pm. Caffeine takes several hours to clear from the body, and that time varies a lot from one person to another. A coffee at 4 pm is therefore still working at bedtime, even if you feel you tolerate it well. Think about tea, cola, energy drinks and dark chocolate too. If you want to keep your afternoon cup, switch to a low-caffeine drink such as a Brainstoorm with 20 mg of caffeine, compared with about 80 mg in an espresso.

5. Limit alcohol in the evening. A glass of wine sometimes helps you drop off, but it degrades the second half of the night: lighter sleep, more frequent waking, heavier snoring. In France, the official guidelines are no more than 10 drinks a week, no more than 2 a day, with alcohol-free days.

6. A light dinner, two to three hours before bed. A large, fatty or very spicy meal just before sleep forces the body to digest instead of rest, and encourages acid reflux. Go for vegetables, a reasonable portion of protein and starchy foods, which help you stay full until morning. And drink mostly during the day, to avoid waking up for the toilet.

Habits 7 and 8

Less light, fewer screens.

7. Dim the lights two hours before bed. Melatonin rises as light falls. Swapping the ceiling light for a warm-light lamp, in the living room as well as the bathroom, tells your brain that night is coming. It is one of the easiest habits to adopt, and one of the most underrated.

8. Switch off screens an hour before. Screens combine three problems: their blue-rich light delays melatonin; their content, news feeds, emails, series, keeps the brain awake; and they make time slip by without you noticing. Night mode softens the first problem, not the other two.

• Charge your phone outside the bedroom, and buy a real alarm clock.
• Set a "screens off" reminder an hour before your bedtime.
• Replace the last episode with a printed book, a calm podcast or gentle music.
• Turn off autoplay for the next episode on your streaming platforms.
• If you have to work late, lower the brightness and switch on night mode.

Habits 9 and 10

Warmth first, then cool.

9. A warm shower or bath, one to two hours before. To fall asleep, your core body temperature needs to drop slightly. Warm water widens the blood vessels in the skin, and when you get out, heat escapes faster: your core temperature falls, which helps you fall asleep. About ten minutes is enough, with pleasantly warm water.

10. Move during the day, gently in the evening. Regular physical activity is one of sleep's best allies. Walking, cycling, swimming, running: what counts is regularity. In the evening, choose gentle activities, stretching, yoga, a walk after dinner. A very intense workout right before bed can delay sleep in some people: keep it for the late afternoon instead.

Habits 11 and 12

Clear your head before lights out.

11. Write tomorrow's list. Thoughts going round in circles at lights out are one of the main causes of trouble falling asleep. Putting down on paper what awaits you tomorrow, in five minutes and as precisely as possible, helps the brain let go: it is written down, so it no longer needs to remember it. Keep a notebook on your bedside table for ideas that come late.

12. Breathe, read, stretch. Thirty minutes of calm activity create a buffer between the day and the night. Cardiac coherence breathing, six breaths a minute for five minutes, is easy to learn. 4-7-8 breathing, a few gentle stretches, reading that has nothing to do with work: choose what relaxes you, and repeat it every evening, so that your body links this ritual with sleep.

If stress is with you all day, you also need to act during the day. Some people add 1 to 2 capsules of Anti-Stress to their morning, which combines ashwagandha, reishi, holy basil, vitamin B6 and schisandra. To understand the link between stress and restless nights, read our article on how to lower cortisol, and our comparison reishi or ashwagandha.

Habit 13

The ideal bedroom to sleep well.

13. A cool, dark, quiet bedroom. This is the environment that helps the body lower its temperature and keeps the brain from being disturbed. A few adjustments are often enough.

Habits 14 and 15

The bed, only for sleeping.

14. Keep the bed for sleep. If you work, eat, watch series or scroll on your phone in bed, your brain ends up associating it with being awake. Keeping the bed for sleep and intimacy gives it back its role as a signal. Go to bed when you feel sleepy, not just because it is time.

15. Get up if sleep won't come. It sounds counterintuitive, but spending hours tossing and turning keeps insomnia going. If you are not asleep after about twenty minutes, without checking the time, get up, go to another dimly lit room, do something calm, and come back when you feel sleepy. These two habits are part of cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, the first-line treatment for chronic insomnia.

Melatonin, valerian, magnesium

And supplements for good sleep?

Once the habits are in place, some people want to pair them with an evening supplement. Here are the most widely used ingredients, and what you should know about each.

These four ingredients come together, with acacia fibre, in Sleep+, our capsules to take 30 minutes before bed. For a day-and-night routine, the Relaxation Pack pairs Sleep+ and Anti-Stress. And to find out all about evening mushrooms, read our comparison of the best mushroom for sleep.

France's food safety agency, ANSES, advises avoiding melatonin supplements during pregnancy and breastfeeding, in children and teenagers, and in people with inflammatory or autoimmune conditions, and asking a doctor first if you are on medication or have epilepsy, asthma or mood disorders. Valerian and melatonin can cause drowsiness: avoid driving after taking them.

A sample routine

An evening that sets up a good night.

Here is what an evening combining most of the habits can look like, for a bedtime around 11 pm. Shift the times to suit your rhythm, keeping the gaps.

When to see a doctor

When habits are not enough.

Insomnia is called chronic when trouble falling asleep, waking in the night or waking too early happens at least three nights a week for at least three months, with an impact on your day. In that case, talk to your doctor: insomnia can be treated, and cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia gives very good results.

• You snore loudly, or your partner notices pauses in your breathing.
• You nod off during the day, at the wheel or in meetings.
• You feel restlessness in your legs in the evening.
• Your nights are disrupted by pain, anxiety or very low mood.
• Your sleep problems started with a new medication.

These signs can point to sleep apnoea, restless legs syndrome or depression, which need specific medical care.

Sources

1. Hirshkowitz M. et al. (2015). National Sleep Foundation's sleep time duration recommendations: methodology and results summary. Sleep Health, 1(1).
2. Chang A.-M. et al. (2015). Evening use of light-emitting eReaders negatively affects sleep, circadian timing, and next-morning alertness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(4).
3. Drake C. et al. (2013). Caffeine effects on sleep taken 0, 3, or 6 hours before going to bed. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 9(11).
4. Haghayegh S. 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.
5. Scullin M. K. et al. (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).

Keep reading

Go further.

Good sleep is built in the evening, but also during the day. Discover our other guides, or browse the guide to mushrooms and adaptogenic plants.