Top Tips: 8 Evidence-Based Habits for Better Sleep

If your sleep is not brilliant, you have probably been given plenty of advice already.

Go to bed earlier. Put your phone away. Buy blackout curtains. Stop drinking coffee. Meditate. Take magnesium. Don't eat after 6pm. Get up at 5am. Somehow relax more.

Before long, getting a good night's sleep can start to feel like another full-time job.

The good news is that you do not need a perfect 27-step bedtime routine. Sleep is influenced by what happens throughout the whole day, and some habits appear to matter considerably more than others.

Here are eight evidence-based places to start.

1. Give Your Body Clock Some Regularity

It is tempting to focus entirely on getting eight hours of sleep, but researchers are increasingly interested in another aspect of sleep health: regularity.

Going to sleep and waking at wildly different times from one day to the next can create a mismatch between our behaviour and our internal circadian clock.

A 2025 systematic review involving 59 studies found fairly consistent associations between greater sleep-timing irregularity and poorer cardiometabolic and mental health outcomes. Some large prospective studies have also linked highly irregular sleep with greater mortality risk, even after taking sleep duration into account.

This suggests that sleep health is about more than simply accumulating a certain number of hours.

If you want one practical anchor, focus on your wake-up time. Try to get up at roughly the same time most days rather than continually shifting your schedule backwards and forwards.

2. Get Outside During the Day
Your brain needs clues about what time it is, and light is one of the most powerful signals it receives.

Light reaching the eyes is detected by specialised cells that communicate with the suprachiasmatic nucleus, the brain's central circadian clock. This helps coordinate rhythms in alertness, body temperature, hormone secretion and sleep.

Bright daytime light, particularly earlier in the day, helps reinforce the difference between biological day and night. By contrast, spending much of the day in relatively dim indoor light and then exposing ourselves to bright light late into the evening can blur those signals.

Get outside. Have your morning coffee in the garden. Walk to the station. Take a short walk after breakfast. Step outside during your lunch break.

Outdoor daylight is generally much brighter than normal indoor lighting, even on a cloudy British day. And you gain the added benefits of moving your body at the same time.

3. Move Your Caffeine Earlier
This is one of the changes most worth experimenting with if you struggle to sleep. Caffeine blocks the action of adenosine, one of the chemicals involved in building sleep pressure during the day.

A systematic review and meta-analysis found that caffeine reduced total sleep time by around 45 minutes on average. It also increased the time taken to fall asleep, increased waking during the night and reduced deep sleep.

The researchers estimated that a coffee containing around 107mg caffeine would need to be consumed approximately 8.8 hours before bedtime to avoid reducing total sleep time.

It does not mean everyone needs an 8.8-hour caffeine curfew. Run your own experiment. If you normally have coffee at 3pm, try moving your last caffeinated drink to lunchtime for a couple of weeks and see what happens.

And remember that caffeine can also come from tea, cola, energy drinks, chocolate and pre-workout supplements.

4. Exercise, But Don't Worry Too Much About the Perfect Time
Regular physical activity is one of the most useful lifestyle habits for health generally, and there is good evidence that exercise can also support sleep.

A large 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis included 200 randomised trials involving more than 23,000 adults and found improvements in subjective sleep quality with exercise.

But when should you exercise? For years, people with poor sleep were routinely told not to exercise in the evening. The research is more nuanced.

A new 2026 systematic review comparing morning with evening exercise included 25 studies. Overall, it found no clear advantage of morning over evening exercise for most sleep outcomes. So, if the only time you can exercise is at 6pm, there is probably no need to abandon it because somebody told you all evening exercise is bad for sleep. But if a hard 9pm HIIT class leaves you buzzing at midnight, however, listen to your own response.

The best exercise time is likely to be one that you can maintain and that works with your sleep.

5. Notice What Alcohol Does to Your Sleep
Alcohol can be deceptive. A drink may make you feel relaxed or drowsy, which makes it very easy to conclude that it helps you sleep. But feeling sedated is not the same as having normal, restorative sleep.

A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis of 27 studies found that alcohol disrupted normal sleep architecture, including delaying REM sleep and reducing the amount of REM sleep. These changes were found even following relatively low amounts of alcohol and became greater as alcohol intake increased. 

If you regularly wake during the night, feel hot or restless, or wake feeling unrefreshed after drinking, try comparing alcohol-free and drinking nights. Your own pattern can be surprisingly revealing.

6. Give Your Evening Meal Time to Settle
Research into chrononutrition, or how food timing interacts with our circadian rhythms, is developing, but there is not yet enough evidence to justify rigid meal-time rules for everyone. Studies of time-restricted eating and sleep have also produced inconsistent findings. 

There are, however, simple practical considerations.

A very large meal immediately before lying down may leave you uncomfortably full and can be problematic if you experience reflux or indigestion. Look at the pattern across your whole day.

If breakfast is tiny, lunch is eaten at your desk and you arrive home ravenous, it is hardly surprising if most of your food ends up being eaten in the evening.

Aim for satisfying meals containing protein, fibre-rich carbohydrate, vegetables and healthy fats, rather than relying on an arbitrary rule such as "no food after 6pm". Just try and finish your meal around 3 hours before going to bed.

7. Create a Wind-Down Signal, Not a Perfect Routine
Your brain cannot necessarily switch instantly from answering emails, watching an exciting television programme or sorting out tomorrow's problems to being ready to sleep.

An evening transition can help. A bit like the bedtime routine that we put together for babies and children. That might mean dimming some lights, having a shower or bath, reading, stretching, listening to music or practising a relaxation exercise, having a cup of sleepy tea.

So, choose an evening routine that feels calming and achievable. You do not need to perform it perfectly for your body to sleep.

8. Know When to Stop Trying to Fix It Yourself
This may be the most important tip of all. If you occasionally have a poor night's sleep, that is normal.

If you have been struggling for months, sleep problems are affecting your ability to function during the day, or you are becoming increasingly anxious about sleep, another supplement or stricter bedtime routine may not be the answer.

It is also important to investigate possible underlying causes. Speak to your GP if persistent sleep problems are affecting daily life. Seek medical assessment if you have symptoms suggesting sleep apnoea, such as loud snoring, pauses in breathing, gasping or choking during sleep, frequent waking or severe daytime tiredness.

Restless legs, pain, menopause symptoms, anxiety, depression, some medications and other medical conditions can also interfere with sleep.

Poor sleep is not always a sign that you are doing bedtime badly.

Start with One Thing
Perhaps the biggest mistake we make with sleep is trying to optimise everything at once.

Instead, choose one change. 

Then give yourself enough time to see whether it actually makes a difference.

Because sleep is not something we can force. Often, the most useful thing we can do is create the conditions that allow our biology to get on with it.

Need Some Support?
Sleep, energy, stress, food and lifestyle habits often overlap. If you are struggling to work out which changes are actually relevant to you, personalised nutrition and lifestyle support can help you look at the bigger picture. Why not book a free health review?