The secret to a perfect nap: when, where and for how long?

Listen to enough productivity podcasters, and it’s easy to convince yourself that napping is a superpower: not just a sticking plaster after a bad night’s sleep, but a shortcut to a better memory, improved mood and possibly a faster 5k run time. Premier League footballers are all at it – and so are professional piano players, UFC champions and Arianna Huffington. But if you haven’t got a dedicated nap-room or a job that encourages regular snoozing, are there really enough benefits to a burst of shut-eye for it to be worth the kerfuffle? Is there a reliable way to get to sleep quickly enough? And can you really guarantee you’ll wake up feeling better, not worse?

“There are three main reasons for napping among most adults,” says Clare Anderson, the University of Birmingham’s professor of sleep and circadian science. “The first is what we call compensatory napping, which is what you do when you’ve had insufficient sleep the night before. The second is prophylactic napping, where you are pre-empting insufficient sleep coming up, for instance if you’re working on night shifts. The third is called “appetitive drive”, which basically comes down to desire: you have an opportunity to sleep during the day, and it feels nice to do it.”

The first thing to do, then, is consider your nap motivation. “Naps can be genuinely useful when night sleeping is being disrupted for reasons outside your control – for instance, if you’re a new parent, or you’re recovering from illness or heavy physical exertion,” says Stephanie Romiszewski, a sleep physiologist and author of Think Less, Sleep More. “But if you’re napping because your night sleep feels fragile or unreliable, that’s often a sign your sleep drive is not where it needs to be. In those cases, naps can become part of the problem, not the solution. Use napping as a short-term solution for short-term problems – the priority should still be a strong and predictable night’s sleep.”

This means that naps shouldn’t be long enough to interfere with your sleep at night, and ideally shouldn’t take place after about 3pm (depending on what time you go to bed at night). How long is sensible? Recommendations vary. In one of the most-cited studies on the subject, Nasa found that astronauts experienced up to a 54% increase in alertness and a 34% increase in performance after a 26-minute nap (technically, this included a six-minute nodding-off period). “I’d suggest setting an alarm for 20 to 30 minutes – most people are asleep within 10 minutes,” says the sleep expert James Wilson. “There’s a lot of advice around about the ideal number of minutes for actually sleeping, but that tends to make people feel more worried than anything – and the worst thing you can do when trying to get to sleep is worry about it.”

If you’re going to sleep for longer, avoid the 45-60 minute window that encourages sleep inertia, that spaced-out feeling when you wake. “The science would say it’s better to have a longer nap of 60 to 90 minutes than a medium-length one,” says Anderson. “Forty-five minutes is long enough to put you into deep sleep and you’re more likely to feel groggy when you wake up – whereas if you take it slightly longer to 60 or 90 minutes, you’re likely to be on the end of a sleep cycle and will probably wake up feeling more refreshed. Though if you’re sleeping for 90 minutes, it will affect how you sleep that night.”

As for exact methodologies, recommendations vary. Some experts suggest using the same protocol you’d use to encourage a good night’s sleep: a quiet room, a comfortable bed and as much darkness as you can manage. Others suggest that you should just doze on the sofa in whatever light happens to be around – both to discourage sleep inertia and to “protect” your bedroom as the place your mind associates with real sleep. “Sleep is something really tricky to force,” says the sleep coach Tracy Hannigan. “If you don’t have any sleepiness, it is more challenging to lie down and essentially command yourself to fall asleep. There’s got to be some drive there to bring the sleep on in the first place. I can usually take a nap in broad daylight and naturally wake up without an alarm, but what helps a lot of people is to wait for a moment that they’re naturally feeling a bit drowsy and just gently relax into it.”

It’s worth experimenting, and if your choices are limited – for instance, if you’re trying to squeeze in 40 winks on a train or in a soundproof office pod – there’s nothing wrong with bringing some accessories. “When I’m working with footballers, I recommend that they don’t get used to napping in bed, because they’re going to have to learn to sleep on the move a lot, whether that’s in hotel rooms or on the team coach,” says Wilson. “But what we do in that case is bring an eye mask and some earbuds, and listen to something relaxing. The mask is a helpful tool, because over time your body learns to make the association and go ‘Oh, OK, we’re having a nap now.’”

Other rituals, from deep breathing to putting on The Archers, work in a similar way – if you only do them when you’re ready for some shut-eye, your nervous system should quickly make the associations. If you choose music, though, Wilson says it should be something you like, not something you think should promote sleep. “I meet a surprising amount of people who think they should listen to whale noises or Enya or something,” he says. “But if that’s not your thing, you’re going to be too annoyed by it to actually go to sleep.” It’s worth noting that snoozing is a skill, and one that might improve with practice – one interesting study of high-performing athletes suggests that they’re high in what scientists call “sleepability”, meaning that they’re good at drifting off to the land of nod. It’s possible (though not mentioned in the study) that this ability to shut off the outside world is also what makes them good at their chosen sports: if you can take a penalty with a crowd hooting at you, why wouldn’t you be able to grab 40 winks on a noisy coach?

As for getting up after a nap, it should feel normal and natural: if you wake up groggier than you started, it’s a clear sign that you’ve slept for too long. If you really want to supercharge the whole process, then the productivity-bro-endorsed “caffeine nap” really does work: “Caffeine takes aabout 20 minutes to get into your system, so having an espresso before you lie down can help your alertness when you wake up,” says Anderson. Just remember to avoid caffeine after 3pm so it doesn’t affect your night-time sleep.

Is there an argument for enforcing a nap even if you’re already getting a decent amount of sleep, staying on top of everything during the day and you don’t feel especially tired? One of the best-known studies on “deliberate practice”, for instance, found that many top musicians reported taking daily naps, while some studies report that about 50% of athletes have regular daytime snoozes. But maybe that means you only really need to nap if you’re putting your body, brain or both through serious bouts of exertion. “The general rule for athletes is to get nine or 10 hours of sleep rather than seven to nine hours,” says Wilson. “I don’t really like putting numbers on these things, but part of the equation for anyone who’s doing a lot is that they probably just need more sleep overall.”

Meanwhile, if you’re at a low ebb in the early afternoon, it’s worth remembering that that’s just a part of your body’s natural rhythms rather than a sign that you need to hit the conference room with a pillow. “It’s probably not because you’ve had a heavy lunch, so much as your natural circadian rhythms,” says Anderson. “There’s definitely some evidence that napping is associated with improved alertness, reduced fatigue and so on, but you don’t need it every day to get the benefits. It’s something to use as and when you need it.”

In other words, if you’ve got time to nap, you like doing it and it seems to leave you more awake than groggy, it’s worth doing. If you feel fine without it, you’re not missing anything. “If you wake up refreshed, function well and stay alert through the day, a nap won’t transform your performance because there is not much to fix,” says Romiszewski. “Treat naps as an occasional support when life demands it, not a daily strategy. A strong sleep baseline built on consistent mornings – regular wake-up time followed by light exposure, movement and realistic expectations – will always beat the perfect nap routine.”