How Much REM Sleep Do You Need? A Sleep Scientist Explains

REM sleep — or rapid-eye-movement sleep — is just one of the stages of sleep we cycle through each night. It’s known as the stage where you dream. But beyond that, REM is important for creativity, processing emotions, and consolidating new memories. 

So, how much REM do you need to be your best? Unfortunately, there’s no clear-cut answer. 

There are no set guidelines as we all need a different amount of sleep overall and a different amount of REM. And to make things more complicated, the REM we need and the overall sleep we need can change nightly. 

Luckily, it’s not something you need to worry about as your brain self-optimizes and gets the right amount of REM for you — as long as you get enough healthy sleep overall. 

Below, we’ll dive into how much REM you need and how to make sure you’re getting enough of it. Plus, we’ll share how the RISE app can help you get enough REM (and every other stage) each night. 

‍

‍

You spend about 20% to 25% of your time asleep in REM. So, if you need eight hours of sleep, you’d need 1 hour 36 minutes to two hours of REM sleep a night. 

There are no definitive guidelines for REM sleep, however, as we all have a different sleep need. Your sleep need is the amount of sleep you need a night. It’s determined by genetics, just like height and eye color. 

Our sleep need insights: We looked at the sleep needs of 1.95 million RISE users aged 24 and older. The median sleep need was eight hours, but sleep needs ranged from five hours to 11 hours 30 minutes — so the amount of REM these users need will vary wildly.  

Your sleep need is generally set from early adulthood, but it can change in certain situations. For example, you may need more sleep when you’re ill or when you’re recovering from intense exercise. It’s not clear if the amount of REM you need changes, too. 

You don’t just get a set amount of REM each night, either. A 2023 study found the percentage of time participants spent REM, light, and deep sleep changed over the course of five nights. 

And if you’ve been missing out on sleep recently, when you get a full night’s sleep, you can experience REM rebound. This is when you get more REM sleep than usual to make up for what you’ve been missing out on. 

The amount of REM sleep you need can also change depending on your age. Newborns and infants spend 50% of their sleep time in REM. This may be because REM helps with brain development. As adults, we spend less time in REM and more time in other sleep stages, like light sleep and deep sleep. 

And medical conditions can also play a role in how much REM you get. For example, depressed individuals spend more time in the REM stage and less time in non-REM sleep. Some research even suggests REM sleep deprivation may improve depression. However, this treatment option should only be used under the guidance of a licensed healthcare professional.

For a sleep scientist’s point of view, we turned to one of our sleep advisors, Dr. Jamie Zeitzer, who’s the co-director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Sciences at Stanford University.

“There’s no magic number when it comes to how much REM you need. The ideal amount of REM will be different for each person and can be different for you each night. It’s not something you need to worry about, though. If you’re getting enough sleep, your brain will make sure you get enough REM, too.” 

How do you know if you’re getting enough sleep? That’s where the RISE app comes in. RISE works out your sleep need based on a year’s worth of phone use data and proprietary sleep-science-based models. You’ll find out your individual sleep need down to the minute. 

RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can click here to view their sleep need.

{{ cta }}

‍

We say you don’t need to know how much REM sleep you need. 

Here’s why: 

• Your brain has it covered: You may need a different amount of REM sleep each night, but you don’t need to work it out. If you get enough sleep overall, your brain will self-optimize and spend the right amount of time in REM.
• You can’t control it: You can’t tell your brain how long to spend in different stages of sleep. Try not to worry over things you can’t control — this anxiety may keep you up at night, leading to less REM sleep.
• You can’t accurately measure it: While many sleep trackers tell you how long you spend in REM, research shows they can be inaccurate. When looking at electrical brainwave activity, it’s hard to tell the difference between being in REM and being awake. To accurately find out how much REM you’re getting, you’d need to do a polysomnography (PSG), or sleep study in a lab. And even then, sleep experts only agree on test results about 80% of the time.
• More research needs to be done: Sleep researchers are still learning about sleep and REM, so we don’t have all the answers. 
• Good sleep hygiene is important: To get more REM, you need to have good sleep hygiene (more on what that is soon). But you should have good sleep hygiene anyway to get healthy sleep and enough total sleep. 
• Every sleep stage is important: Don’t forget about deep sleep and light sleep — you need to get enough of every sleep stage to be at your best. 
• Sleep debt is more important than REM sleep: Sleep debt is the amount of sleep you’ve missed out on recently. This number has the biggest impact on how you feel each day — and, unlike REM, you can control this one. 

At RISE, we don’t track your REM sleep. We’ve all got enough to worry about in life, so why add getting enough REM to the list when we can’t control it or accurately measure it?

Instead of time spent in sleep stages, RISE works out your unique sleep need and whether you’re carrying any sleep debt. This way, you can aim to get enough sleep overall each night and keep your sleep debt low. 

By doing these two things, you’ll have more energy, be more productive, and boost your mental and physical health — all while getting enough REM sleep without even thinking about it. 

RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can click here to view their sleep debt. 

‍

There are four sleep stages in total: stage 1, stage 2 or light sleep, stage 3 or deep sleep, and REM sleep. 

We cycle through each stage to make one sleep cycle, and one cycle can last about 70 to 120 minutes. Depending on your total sleep duration, you may get four to six sleep cycles a night.

Here are the sleep stages that make up a sleep cycle: 

• Stage 1: This is the stage when you first fall asleep. It only lasts for a few minutes. You may spend about 2% to 5% of your time asleep in stage 1. 
• Stage 2 (light sleep): This stage is known as light sleep. Your body temperature drops and your breathing, heart rate, and brain activity begin to slow down and become more regular. In the first sleep cycle, you may spend 10 to 25 minutes in stage 2, and this will get progressively longer with each sleep cycle. You may spend about 45% to 55% of your time asleep in light sleep.
• Stage 3 (deep sleep): This stage is known as deep sleep or slow-wave sleep. Your breathing and heart rate slow down even further, and your brain activity produces patterns known as delta waves. In your first sleep cycle, you may spend 20 to 40 minutes in deep sleep, and this will progressively decrease with each cycle. You may spend about 10% to 25% of your time asleep in deep sleep.
• Rapid eye movement (REM): This is the final sleep stage, characterized by darting eye movements under your eyelids. You may spend one to five minutes in REM in your first sleep cycle, and longer and longer in each cycle as the night goes on. You may spend about 20% to 25% of your total time asleep in REM. 

When you’ve moved through all four sleep stages, you’ll start another sleep cycle from the beginning. 

Heads-up: This is how a typical night of sleep may look. But sleep architecture — or how your sleep is structured — can look different for each person. Your sleep cycles can change from night to night and throughout the night, too. And the boundaries between sleep stages can be fuzzy. All this makes it even harder to say how much REM you need.  

{{ cta-mini }}

‍

REM — or rapid-eye-movement sleep — is one of the four stages of sleep that make up a sleep cycle.

It’s known as the stage where we’re most likely to dream. And during REM, our eyes can be seen moving rapidly under our eyelids — hence the name. 

We move through three stages of non-rapid-eye-movement sleep (NREM sleep) before reaching REM sleep. These four sleep stages make up one sleep cycle. 

We only spend one to five minutes in REM during our first sleep cycle. But this time gets progressively longer as the night goes on. In fact, most of our REM sleep happens in the second half of the night.

‍

During REM, your brain wave activity, breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure increase and become more erratic — after being lower and more regular during the previous sleep stage: deep sleep. 

Most of your muscles are paralyzed, which may be to stop us from acting out your dreams, and your eyes dart around quickly under your eyelids. 

While you can dream in other sleep stages, if you wake up from a vivid dream, you were probably in REM. 

‍

REM is important as it may play a role in how we make memories, regulate our emotions, and be creative. 

And that’s just to start. Here’s what else REM is important for: 

• Brain development: During REM, your brain may work on development and reinforcing new motor skills. 
• Pain response: One study found our response to pain increases when we don’t get enough REM. 
• Executive function: Research shows more REM sleep and fewer middle of the night awakenings are significantly associated with better executive function, which includes working memory, self-control, and flexible thinking. 
• Accuracy: In the study above, less REM was linked to poorer accuracy. 
• Reducing dementia risk: Research has found less REM sleep is associated with a higher risk of dementia. 
• Language learning: The sleep scientist and author of Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker, says REM may play a role in language acquisition in babies.
• Quality of sleep: One study found more REM was linked to better self-reported sleep quality — although there’s no agreed-upon definition for sleep quality yet.

‍

When you don’t get enough REM sleep, your memory, learning, emotional regulation, accuracy, and creativity can all take a hit. You may feel pain more intensely, and you may increase your odds of dementia. 

Plus, you’ll probably get all of the adverse effects that come with not getting enough sleep in general. That includes daytime sleepiness, trouble focusing, poor mental health and wellness, a lowered immune system, and an increased risk of health problems like type 2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. 

REM is so important that your brain tries to make up for lost REM when you get a lack of sleep.

In one study, participants got six hours of sleep a night for six nights and then 10 hours of sleep for three nights. The amount of REM sleep participants got decreased during the six-hour nights, but then increased significantly during the 10-hour nights. 

Even though the amount of deep sleep they got stayed the same throughout the experiment, participants experienced hormonal changes and their neurobehavior was impacted. 

‍

To get more REM, get enough sleep overall. We can’t control how long we spend in REM. But, when we get enough healthy natural sleep, our brains self-optimize and automatically spend the right amount of time in REM, and in every other sleep stage.

Use RISE to find out how much sleep you need and aim to hit this number each night. 

Here’s how to get enough sleep and enough REM sleep: 

• Get bright light in the morning: This resets your circadian rhythm (your body clock) for the day, helping you feel sleepy later that night. Aim for 10 minutes of natural light as soon as possible after waking up, and make that 15 to 20 if it’s an overcast day or if you’re getting light through a window. 
• Avoid bright light in the evening: Light suppresses the sleep hormone melatonin and can keep you up. Dim the lights and put on blue-light blocking glasses about 90 minutes before bed. 
• Avoid caffeine about 12 hours before bed: Caffeine can keep you up at night. And a 2021 study found regular caffeine consumption can increase how long it takes you to get to your first REM cycle. 
• Avoid alcohol three to four hours before bed: Alcohol suppresses REM sleep and it takes longer for you to reach your first bout of REM when you’ve had a drink. 
• Do a relaxing bedtime routine: RISE users say stress and anxiety are the biggest hurdles stopping them from getting a good night’s sleep. Try reading, journaling, or doing yoga to unwind before bed. 
• Avoid sleep aids: Research shows sleep aids, like benzodiazepines and barbiturates, reduce how much REM sleep you get. 
• Avoid cannabis: More research needs to be done but some studies show using cannabis can reduce how much REM you get. It may also increase how long it takes you to get to your first REM sleep stage.  
• Avoid antidepressants (if possible): Antidepressants can decrease your total REM and increase how long it takes you to reach the REM stage — for both healthy and depressed patients. REM may bounce back again after a few weeks in some antidepressants.
• Get checked for sleep disorders: Sleep disorders like insomnia and sleep apnea can lead to less REM sleep. Speak to your healthcare provider or a sleep specialist if you think you’ve got a sleep disorder. We’ve covered how to know if you have sleep apnea here.
• Keep a consistent sleep schedule: RISE users with consistent sleep patterns have lower sleep debt than those with inconsistent patterns. Plus, if you cut your sleep short you could be missing out on a large proportion of REM as most of it happens in the second half of the night. 

We’ve covered more on how to get more REM sleep here.

Most of these habits are a part of sleep hygiene, the behaviors you can do to get better sleep. To help you get enough REM sleep, and enough sleep overall, RISE can tell you when to do 20+ sleep habits daily. 

RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can click here to set up their 20+ in-app habit notifications.  

‍

You spend about 10% to 25% of your time asleep in deep sleep. That means if you need eight hours of sleep, you’d need 48 minutes to two hours of deep sleep. 

But there are no set guidelines for deep sleep. The amount you need will vary depending on how much sleep you need overall. And both the amount of deep sleep and the amount of overall sleep you need can change from night to night. Deep sleep is prioritized over other stages at the beginning of the night. So, even if you cut your sleep short by a couple of hours, you will still likely get enough deep sleep (but not enough REM).

We’ve covered more on how much deep sleep you need here.

{{ video }}

‍

Focus on Your Overall Night of Sleep  

You’ll spend 20% to 25% of your time asleep in REM, but this can change from person to person and even from night to night. So, there’s no magic number when it comes to how much REM you need. 

But it’s not something you need to worry about. If you get enough healthy naturalistic sleep, your brain will self-optimize and spend the right amount of time in REM for you. 

So, to get enough REM, focus on getting enough sleep overall. Use the RISE app to find out your unique sleep need and follow the app’s 20+ personalized sleep hygiene habit reminders each day to get enough shut-eye. 

You can start getting enough REM fast — 80% of RISE users get more sleep within five days.