15 evidence-based questions about your sleep habits. Get your personal score, see exactly where you lose points, and get prioritized improvements ranked by impact.
Sleep hygiene encompasses the collection of habits, behaviors, and environmental factors that support or undermine sleep quality. The term was developed by sleep researcher Peter Hauri in the 1970s and has since become the foundation of first-line sleep recommendations worldwide. Unlike medication, sleep hygiene works by addressing the behavioral and environmental factors that maintain sleep difficulties — producing durable improvements rather than dependency.
Not all sleep hygiene practices are equal. Research consistently identifies consistent wake time as the single highest-impact practice — more important than bedtime consistency, caffeine cutoff, or screen use. This is because wake time anchors the circadian clock through the cortisol awakening response and morning light exposure. All other circadian and sleep pressure mechanisms flow from this anchor.
The second tier includes practices that affect arousal level before sleep: caffeine timing, alcohol avoidance, screen reduction, and managing cognitive arousal (worry, rumination). The third tier includes environmental factors: bedroom temperature, darkness, and noise. The fourth tier includes exercise timing, napping strategy, and meal timing. This hierarchy means that improving sleep hygiene should start with the highest-tier practices rather than spending energy on minor environmental optimizations while ignoring schedule consistency.
Sleep hygiene is highly effective for preventing sleep difficulties and addressing mild-to-moderate sleep problems. However, for clinical chronic insomnia (difficulty sleeping 3+ nights per week for 3+ months with daytime impairment), sleep hygiene alone has a modest success rate. CBT-I (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia) — which includes sleep hygiene plus stimulus control, sleep restriction, and cognitive restructuring — is the evidence-based gold standard treatment with 70–80% success rates. A perfect sleep hygiene score doesn't guarantee perfect sleep; it removes the behavioral barriers so the underlying biological sleep system can function optimally.