Recommended hours of sleep at every age, from newborns to older adults — CDC & Sleep Foundation guidelines. ✓ CDC / Sleep Foundation
Midpoint of the recommended range, in hours.
| Age group | Age | Recommended sleep |
|---|---|---|
| Newborn | 0–3 months | 14–17 hours |
| Infant | 4–12 months | 12–16 hours |
| Toddler | 1–2 years | 11–14 hours |
| Preschool | 3–5 years | 10–13 hours |
| School-age | 6–12 years | 9–12 hours |
| Teen | 13–18 years | 8–10 hours |
| Young adult | 18–25 years | 7–9 hours |
| Adult | 26–64 years | 7–9 hours |
| Older adult | 65+ years | 7–8 hours |
Sleep needs are highest in infancy and gradually fall through childhood into adulthood. Newborns need 14–17 hours, school-age children 9–12, teenagers 8–10, and adults 7–9 hours a night. Adults over 65 still need about 7–8 hours, though sleep often becomes lighter and more broken with age. These are consensus recommendations from the CDC and the Sleep Foundation.
Regularly getting less than the recommended amount is linked to weight gain, heart disease, weaker immunity and poorer focus. If you struggle to fit in enough sleep or wake unrefreshed, work backwards from your wake time to set a bedtime — our sleep calculator plans bedtimes around 90-minute sleep cycles, and the age calculator can confirm your exact age band.
These recommendations are used internationally — the UK's NHS, and health bodies in Canada, Australia and elsewhere cite very similar ranges. Sleep need is biological, so the hours apply wherever you live.
Recommended sleep durations are published as bands rather than single numbers because individual requirements genuinely differ within an age group. The bands narrow with age: newborns need a very wide range, school-age children a narrower one, and adults settle around seven to nine hours with meaningful variation at both ends.
Duration is only one of three things that matter, and it is the easiest to measure. Timing matters because sleep taken against your circadian rhythm is less restorative hour for hour, which is why shift work is difficult to compensate for by sleeping longer. Continuity matters because fragmented sleep interrupts the cycling between stages that makes sleep useful.
Sleep cycles run roughly 90 minutes, which is the basis for scheduling wake time at a cycle boundary rather than mid-cycle — waking during deep sleep produces the heavy grogginess that lasts well into the morning. The cycle length is itself an average, so the approach is a useful heuristic rather than a precise instrument.