A bedtime routine for adults
Updated
A bedtime routine for adults is the same thing that works for children — a short, predictable sequence that tells your body the day is over — run on adult problems: a phone, a late coffee, and a head full of tomorrow. Start it about an hour before bed, keep it to three to five steps, and finish it before you get into bed. Below is that hour, step by step, for an 11pm bedtime, and the things worth leaving out. If you have not set your wake time and bedtime yet, start with how to start a sleep routine.
Why adults need a routine at all
A child’s bath-book-bed routine works because it is a cue: the same steps in the same order, and the body learns what comes next. Nothing about that stops working at eighteen. What changes is that adults have no one running it for them, and something much more interesting than a bath competing for the last hour.
The NHS advice is short: relax for at least an hour before bed. The routine is how you make that hour happen on a Wednesday, not just on a good Sunday.
The last hour, step by step
Shown for an 11pm bedtime — shift every time by however far your bedtime is from 11. You do not need all of these. Pick the three you will actually do.
| Time | Minutes before bed | Step |
|---|---|---|
| 9:30pm | 90 | Warm shower or bath |
| 10pm | 60 | Phone on the charger, outside the bedroom |
| 10:15pm | 45 | Lights down |
| 10:30pm | 30 | Tomorrow’s list, on paper |
| 10:45pm | 15 | Read on paper, stretch or breathe slowly |
| 11pm | 0 | Bed — dark, cool, nothing left to do |
Earlier in the day: the two cut-offs
The routine starts long before the last hour. Caffeine cost healthy adults an average of 45 minutes of sleep across 24 studies, and the cut-off for one regular coffee works out at about nine hours before bed — 2pm for an 11pm bedtime. The full table by bedtime is in when to stop drinking caffeine. Alcohol has a cut-off too: the NHS says at least six hours before bed, and a 2025 review found REM sleep delayed and shortened from around two drinks.
90 minutes out: a warm shower or bath
A warm shower or bath one to two hours before bed draws heat out to your hands and feet, and the core temperature drop that follows is part of the body’s own lead-in to sleep. A review of the studies found people fell asleep about ten minutes sooner on average, with water around 40–43 °C and about ninety minutes before bed working best. Ten minutes is enough; it is the timing that matters.
60 minutes out: the phone leaves the room
This is the step that decides the rest of the hour. Not “screens off” — the phone, physically somewhere else, charging.
The usual explanation is blue light, and it is the weaker half of the story. A 2024 review found phone screens give off far less light than room lighting and delay sleep by minutes at most through light alone. What the phone does very effectively is take time: in a study of 45,202 students, each extra hour of screen use after going to bed went with higher odds of insomnia symptoms and about 24 minutes less sleep. A night-mode filter does nothing about that. A charger in the kitchen does.
If you use the phone as an alarm, a cheap alarm clock is the single best sleep purchase on this page.
45 minutes out: lights down
Turn off the overheads and use one or two lamps. In a lab study, ordinary room light in the hours before bed shortened the night’s melatonin by about 90 minutes compared with dim light. Low, warm and below eye level is the idea; nothing needs to be special about the bulb.
30 minutes out: tomorrow’s list, on paper
Write down what you need to do tomorrow — the specific things, not a vague “work stuff”. In a small sleep-lab trial, people who wrote a to-do list for the coming days fell asleep about nine minutes faster than people who wrote about what they had already done, and the more specific the list, the faster they fell asleep. The list takes tomorrow out of your head and puts it on the table, where it will still be in the morning.
15 minutes out: something slow
Read a paper book, stretch, or breathe slowly for five minutes. None of these has a big study proving it on its own; all of them are a wind-down that is not another screen, and relaxation is a standard part of sleep advice for exactly that reason. Pick the one you look forward to — that is the one you will still be doing in a month.
Bed: dark, cool, done
The routine ends at the mattress. A dark room matters even with your eyes closed, and a cool one helps the temperature drop that comes with sleep — the Sleep Foundation puts the sweet spot around 18 °C (65 °F), give or take a few degrees for the person.
If sleep will not come
Get up after about twenty minutes. Do something calm in dim light somewhere other than bed — read, sit, fold laundry — and go back when you feel sleepy. The NHS phrases the rule as only going to bed when you are sleepy. It feels backwards, and it protects the thing the whole routine is building: a bed your brain associates with sleeping, not with lying there awake.
That is also why “bedtime stacking” — the 2026 trend of doing your whole evening in bed, from skincare to scrolling — drew warnings from sleep doctors. A good routine is the opposite: everything happens before bed, and bed is the last step.
What to leave out
- The twelve-step routine. Every extra step is another decision at the hour you are worst at making them. Three you finish beats ten you admire.
- Mouth tape. A 2025 systematic review rated every study poor quality and raised real safety concerns for anyone who cannot breathe freely through the nose. Not for everyone, and not something to start on a whim.
- The sleepy girl mocktail as a sleep aid. Drink it if you like it; the American Academy of Sleep Medicine notes there is no solid research on the drink itself.
- Checking your sleep score in bed. The AASM’s advice to tracker users is to look at sleep data in the morning only, and not to obsess over nightly results. Nothing about last night should be on a screen at 11pm.
Night owls, shift workers and parents
Night owls: the routine does not need to be early. Shift every step to your bedtime; the order and the gaps are what matter, not the clock.
Shift workers: anchor the routine to the sleep you are about to have, not to the time of day. A 9am bedtime gets the same last hour — blackout curtains doing the work the evening would have done.
Parents of small children: keep it to three steps, and make the first one the phone. You will not get ninety calm minutes; you can get fifteen.
Make it stick
Write the routine down with a time on every step, and tick it off each night. The free printable checklist has room for five steps and fourteen nights, and no score column, on purpose. RestStack — coming to iPhone and Android — runs the same routine on your phone, each step timed from your bedtime, with a star for every night you keep. You can run it in your browser tonight.
Missed a night? Mark it and do tomorrow. One missed night does not undo a habit; giving up after it does.
Questions
How long should a bedtime routine be for adults?
About an hour of wind-down, which is what the NHS suggests — relax for at least an hour before bed. Inside that hour, three to five short steps are plenty. Two things happen much earlier and still count as part of the routine — the last coffee about nine hours before bed, and the last alcohol about six.
What time should adults go to bed?
Whatever time gives you seven or more hours before a wake time you can keep every day. There is no correct clock time — 10pm and 1am are both fine if they are steady. Pick the wake time first, count back, and protect the bedtime that falls out of it.
Is it bad to use your phone before bed?
The problem is mostly the time, not the light. Recent reviews found phone screens are dim compared with room lighting and delay sleep by minutes at most through light alone, while time spent on a screen in bed goes with less sleep and more insomnia symptoms. Charging the phone outside the bedroom solves both, which is why it beats a blue-light filter.
Should I shower at night or in the morning to sleep better?
At night, about one to two hours before bed. A warm shower or bath then draws heat to your hands and feet, and the drop in core temperature afterwards is part of the body's own signal for sleep. In a review of the studies, people who did it fell asleep about ten minutes sooner on average.
What if I do my routine and still can't fall asleep?
Get up after about twenty minutes and do something calm in dim light — read on paper, sit somewhere else — then go back when you feel sleepy. Lying in bed willing yourself to sleep teaches your brain that bed is a place for being awake. If it keeps happening for weeks despite the routine, that is worth a conversation with a doctor.
