How to Get More Deep Sleep: 8 Evidence-Based Ways to Sleep More Deeply
How to Get More Deep Sleep: 8 Evidence-Based Ways to Sleep More Deeply
If your watch or sleep tracker says you are only getting a small amount of deep sleep, it is easy to assume something is wrong.
Deep sleep is an important part of a normal night’s sleep, but it is not something you can simply switch on or force your body to produce more of.
Instead, the best approach is to support the conditions that allow healthy sleep to happen naturally — including getting enough sleep overall, keeping a consistent routine, being sensible with caffeine and alcohol, staying active and addressing things that repeatedly disturb your sleep.
In this guide, we look at how to get more deep sleep, what deep sleep actually is, how much you may need and whether the deep-sleep score on your smartwatch is really as accurate as it looks.
Contents
What Is Deep Sleep?
Deep sleep is the deepest stage of non-rapid eye movement sleep and is also known as stage N3 or slow-wave sleep.
Sleep is not one continuous state. Throughout the night, your brain moves repeatedly through different stages of non-REM and REM sleep.
According to the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, non-REM sleep has three stages. Stage N3 is deep sleep and is characterised by slow patterns of electrical brain activity.
You normally spend more time in deep sleep during the earlier part of the night. As the night continues, deep-sleep periods generally become shorter while REM periods become longer.
This means deep sleep is not evenly distributed across eight hours. Your body moves naturally between different stages as part of a normal sleep cycle.
Why Is Deep Sleep Important?
Deep sleep is associated with several important processes involving the brain and body.
One of the most extensively studied is memory consolidation. Research suggests slow-wave sleep helps the brain process and stabilise some of the information learned while awake.
A scientific review of slow-wave sleep and memory describes slow-wave sleep as an important part of sleep-dependent declarative memory consolidation.
Deep sleep is also associated with distinctive hormonal and immune activity. Growth hormone secretion is strongly linked with slow-wave sleep, while research has also investigated its relationship with immune-system function.
However, this does not mean that deep sleep is the only important stage of sleep. REM sleep, lighter non-REM sleep and the overall continuity and duration of your sleep all matter too.
How Much Deep Sleep Do You Need?
There is no single amount of deep sleep that every adult must achieve each night.
The proportion of time spent in deep sleep varies according to factors including age, previous sleep, individual biology and the way sleep is measured.
Deep sleep also tends to decrease as we get older. That means comparing your sleep-stage percentages with somebody decades younger — or even with another person the same age — may not be particularly useful.
It is also worth remembering that consumer sleep trackers estimate sleep stages rather than directly measuring brain activity in the same way as a clinical sleep study.
Instead of chasing one perfect percentage, it is usually more useful to look at your overall sleep: are you getting enough sleep, is it reasonably consistent and do you generally feel rested and able to function during the day?
Why Am I Not Getting Enough Deep Sleep?
A low deep-sleep reading does not necessarily mean you have a medical problem.
Possible explanations include:
- Not getting enough total sleep
- An inconsistent sleep schedule
- Caffeine consumed too close to bedtime
- Alcohol
- Stress or persistent worrying
- Repeated awakenings during the night
- Pain or another health condition affecting sleep
- Sleep disorders such as obstructive sleep apnoea
- Normal age-related changes in sleep architecture
- Inaccuracy in your sleep tracker
Before trying to “hack” your deep sleep, look at your sleep as a whole.
If your main problem is lying awake thinking, our guide to how to stop overthinking includes several evidence-based techniques for managing repetitive thoughts, particularly at night.
How to Get More Deep Sleep: 8 Evidence-Based Ways
If you want to know how to get more deep sleep, focus on improving the conditions that support healthy sleep rather than trying to control one individual sleep stage.
There is currently no reliable lifestyle “hack” that guarantees a particular amount of stage N3 sleep every night.
However, the following habits can support overall sleep quality and may help protect the natural slow-wave sleep your body produces.
1. Give Yourself Enough Time to Sleep
This sounds obvious, but you cannot reliably increase one part of your sleep if you are routinely cutting the whole night short.
Deep sleep occurs naturally as part of your normal sleep cycles, particularly during the earlier portion of the night.
If your bedtime constantly gets pushed later while your morning alarm stays the same, you reduce the amount of time available for your normal sleep architecture to unfold.
Rather than focusing immediately on your deep-sleep score, start by making sure you are giving yourself enough opportunity to sleep.
2. Keep Your Sleep Schedule Consistent
Your sleep-wake cycle is influenced by your circadian rhythm — the roughly 24-hour biological system that helps regulate when you feel alert and when you feel sleepy.
Going to bed and waking at dramatically different times from one day to the next can make your sleep routine less predictable.
Try to keep your waking time and bedtime reasonably consistent, including at weekends where practical.
You do not need to become obsessed with sleeping at exactly the same minute every night. A sustainable routine is more useful than turning bedtime into another source of stress.
Regular sleep also fits into the wider relationship between sleep and the body’s stress-response systems, which we explore in our guide to how to lower cortisol naturally.
3. Be Careful With Caffeine
If you are trying to sleep more deeply, caffeine is one of the most useful things to look at.
Caffeine blocks adenosine receptors in the brain. Adenosine is involved in the build-up of sleep pressure that helps you feel increasingly sleepy the longer you have been awake.
A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis found that caffeine reduced total sleep time by around 45 minutes on average and reduced the duration of deep sleep by around 11 minutes across the included studies.
The same analysis estimated that a coffee containing around 107mg of caffeine would need to be consumed approximately 8.8 hours before bedtime to avoid a measurable reduction in total sleep time.
More recent research has reached similar conclusions. A 2025 meta-analysis of controlled trials found caffeine reduced slow-wave sleep proportions, particularly in younger participants and with higher doses.
Individual sensitivity varies considerably, but if you are regularly struggling with sleep, moving your final coffee earlier in the day is a sensible experiment.
4. Exercise Regularly
Regular physical activity is associated with better sleep across a range of measures.
A 2025 systematic review and network meta-analysis examined randomised trials involving 1,214 adults with sleep disorders.
Exercise interventions improved sleep efficiency, reduced time awake after initially falling asleep and produced a small increase in slow-wave sleep.
That does not mean an intense workout immediately before bed will automatically increase deep sleep that night.
Instead, think of regular movement as one component of a healthy sleep routine. Walking, swimming, cycling, resistance training and other forms of activity can all count.
5. Avoid Using Alcohol as a Sleep Aid
Alcohol can make you feel sleepy, which is why it is sometimes mistaken for a useful sleep aid.
But falling asleep faster does not necessarily mean you are getting better-quality sleep.
A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis found that alcohol altered normal sleep architecture, with REM sleep disruption occurring even following relatively low doses.
Higher doses shortened the time taken to fall asleep and reach deep sleep, but this came alongside greater disruption to the normal structure of sleep later in the night.
In other words, alcohol may make you feel as though you fall asleep more easily while still producing a less normal night of sleep overall.
6. Make Your Bedroom Sleep-Friendly
Your environment can either make sleep easier or create repeated opportunities for it to be disturbed.
A simple sleep-friendly bedroom is generally:
- Dark
- Quiet
- Comfortable
- Not excessively warm
You do not necessarily need expensive sleep technology.
Blackout curtains, reducing unnecessary noise, comfortable bedding and keeping bright light away from your sleeping environment may be more useful than buying a device promising to “boost deep sleep”.
Try to focus on the fundamentals before spending money on supplements or sleep gadgets.
7. Give Your Mind Time to Wind Down
You can feel physically tired while your mind is still operating at full speed.
If work, social media, messages and unfinished tasks continue until the moment you get into bed, there is very little transition between being active and trying to sleep.
A wind-down routine does not need to be elaborate. You might:
- Dim the lights
- Read something relaxing
- Write tomorrow’s tasks down
- Use slow breathing or relaxation exercises
- Avoid dealing with stressful emails immediately before bed
If stress regularly makes it difficult to switch off, you may also find our guide to how to reset your nervous system useful.
The aim is not to force your nervous system into a particular sleep stage. It is simply to create a more gradual transition from wakefulness towards sleep.
8. Address Persistent Sleep Problems
Sometimes the reason you are sleeping poorly is not your bedtime routine.
Pain, anxiety, depression, menopause, medication and sleep disorders can all affect sleep.
Obstructive sleep apnoea, for example, can repeatedly interrupt breathing and sleep during the night.
Consider speaking to a healthcare professional if you regularly:
- Wake feeling unrefreshed despite spending enough time in bed
- Experience excessive daytime sleepiness
- Snore very loudly
- Wake gasping or choking
- Struggle to fall or stay asleep for a prolonged period
- Have pain or another health problem regularly disturbing your sleep
Trying increasingly complicated sleep hacks is unlikely to solve an underlying health condition.
Can Your Watch Really Measure Deep Sleep?
A smartwatch or smart ring can estimate deep sleep, but it cannot measure sleep stages in exactly the same way as a clinical sleep study.
Clinical sleep staging generally uses polysomnography, which records signals including electrical brain activity, eye movement and muscle activity.
Most consumer wearables instead infer sleep stages from signals such as movement and heart rate.
A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis concluded that wearable sleep trackers can provide useful estimates of broad sleep measures but showed variable performance compared with polysomnography and should not be treated as stand-alone tools for detailed sleep-stage assessment.
Another 2026 review of finger-worn sleep devices found reasonably good performance for distinguishing sleep from wakefulness, but accuracy varied when devices attempted to identify individual sleep stages.
So if your tracker says you got 42 minutes of deep sleep one night and 75 minutes the next, do not assume your physiology changed as precisely as the numbers suggest.
The trend may still be interesting. The individual number should not become a diagnosis.
Deep Sleep vs REM Sleep: What’s the Difference?
Deep sleep and REM sleep are different stages of sleep, and both form part of a healthy night.
Deep sleep is stage N3 non-REM sleep. Brain activity becomes dominated by slower waves, and deep sleep is most abundant earlier in the night.
REM stands for rapid eye movement sleep. Brain activity becomes more similar to wakefulness, most vivid dreaming tends to occur during REM and periods of REM generally become longer towards the morning.
It is therefore misleading to think of one as the “good” stage and the other as less important.
Healthy sleep involves cycling through different stages rather than maximising one particular part of the night.
Deep Sleep FAQs
How Can I Get More Deep Sleep?
If you want to know how to get more deep sleep, focus on supporting healthy sleep overall. Give yourself enough time to sleep, keep a reasonably consistent schedule, exercise regularly, avoid excessive caffeine late in the day, be cautious with alcohol and address anything that repeatedly wakes you during the night.
How Much Deep Sleep Do You Need?
There is no single deep-sleep target that applies to every adult. The amount of stage N3 sleep varies between people and generally changes with age. Consumer trackers also estimate rather than directly measure sleep stages, so it is better to consider overall sleep quality and daytime functioning alongside any percentage shown by a device.
What Percentage of Sleep Should Be Deep Sleep?
There is considerable individual variation in the proportion of sleep spent in stage N3, and this changes with age. A sleep tracker showing a percentage outside an online “ideal range” does not by itself mean anything is medically wrong.
Why Am I Getting So Little Deep Sleep?
Possible reasons include insufficient total sleep, an irregular routine, caffeine, alcohol, stress, repeated awakenings, pain, another health condition or normal changes with age. Your wearable may also be estimating your sleep stages inaccurately.
Does Caffeine Reduce Deep Sleep?
Research suggests it can. A systematic review and meta-analysis found caffeine reduced deep-sleep duration as well as total sleep time. The effect varies according to dose, timing and individual sensitivity.
Does Alcohol Increase Deep Sleep?
Higher doses of alcohol can initially shorten the time taken to reach deep sleep, but this does not mean alcohol improves sleep. Research shows alcohol disrupts normal sleep architecture, particularly REM sleep, and increasing doses produce greater disruption.
Does Exercise Increase Deep Sleep?
Research suggests regular exercise can improve several measures of sleep quality. A recent meta-analysis of adults with sleep disorders also found a small increase in slow-wave sleep following exercise interventions.
Is Two Hours of Deep Sleep Good?
A single number cannot tell you whether your sleep is healthy. Deep-sleep duration varies considerably between people, and consumer trackers do not measure sleep stages with clinical precision. Overall sleep duration, regularity, how often you wake and how you feel during the day are also important.
Is 30 Minutes of Deep Sleep Enough?
A single 30-minute reading from a smartwatch or ring is not enough to diagnose a sleep problem. Sleep stages vary from night to night and wearables can misclassify them. If you consistently sleep poorly or experience significant daytime sleepiness, consider discussing your symptoms with a healthcare professional rather than relying only on tracker data.
Which Is More Important: REM or Deep Sleep?
Both are normal and important parts of sleep. Deep sleep is associated with processes including memory consolidation and characteristic hormonal activity, while REM sleep has important roles in brain function and memory. A healthy night involves cycling through both rather than trying to maximise one stage.
Can You Have Too Much Deep Sleep?
Sleep-stage proportions vary between individuals and according to factors such as age and previous sleep. A high reading on a wearable does not necessarily indicate a problem, particularly because consumer devices only estimate sleep stages.
The Bottom Line
Learning how to get more deep sleep is not really about forcing your brain to spend a particular percentage of the night in stage N3.
Deep sleep is one part of a much larger sleep system.
The most useful things you can control are the basics: give yourself enough opportunity to sleep, keep your routine reasonably consistent, exercise, pay attention to caffeine and alcohol and create an environment that makes uninterrupted sleep easier.
And try not to let your sleep tracker create a new reason to lose sleep.
Wearables can be useful for spotting broad patterns, but a nightly deep-sleep score is still an estimate rather than a clinical measurement.
When Poor Sleep Becomes an Ongoing Problem
Occasional poor sleep is common. Persistent sleep difficulties are different, particularly when they are linked to pain, another long-term condition or significant daytime impairment.
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