What Time Should I Go to Bed If I Wake Up at 6 AM?

If you wake up at 6:00 AM, go to bed at 10:15 PM for 5 full sleep cycles (7.5 hours), or 8:45 PM if you want 6 cycles (9 hours). Both times include 15 minutes to fall asleep.

Those two are the ones to aim for. The rest of this page adjusts them for how quickly you actually drift off, and shows how to get there if you're currently going to bed much later.

Bedtimes for a 6 AM wake-up

For most adults, 10:15 PM is the sensible everyday target. It lands inside the 7-to-9-hour range sleep experts recommend. The 11:45 PM option ends on a cycle, so you may wake up feeling fine, but 6 hours a night isn't enough to live on. Here's what the research shows.

Adjust for how long you take to fall asleep

The standard math assumes 15 minutes to fall asleep. If you know you're faster or slower, use the row that fits you.

Not sure which row you're in? Most healthy adults fall asleep in roughly 10 to 20 minutes. If it regularly takes you much longer, or you're out the second your head hits the pillow, that's worth a look. What your sleep latency says about you.

Why 6 AM is harder than it looks

A 6 AM alarm is common for early shifts, school-run parents, commuters and morning gym-goers. The math is simple. The hard part is that 10:15 PM feels early to a lot of people, especially if evenings are the only time you get to yourself.

A few things make it harder:

• Dark mornings. For part of the year, 6 AM is before sunrise in much of the US. Without light, your body clock doesn't get its usual "morning" signal, and you may drift later over time.
• Late evening light. Screens and bright rooms after 9 PM push your body clock the other way. Reading on a light-emitting device before bed has been shown to delay the body clock and make it harder to fall asleep compared with a printed book.
• Weekend drift. Sleeping until 8:30 on Saturday resets the clock later, so Sunday night at 10:15 feels impossible.

Shift to a 10:15 PM bedtime gradually

If you're currently falling asleep around midnight, don't try to jump straight to 10:15. You'll likely lie awake. Move 15 minutes earlier every few days instead, and keep the 6 AM alarm fixed the whole time.

That's about three weeks from midnight to 10:15 PM. It sounds slow, but it tends to stick. For a fuller plan, see how to go to bed earlier.

Make 6 AM mornings easier

• Get bright light soon after you get up. Turn on every light, or step outside if it's light out. Morning light helps keep your body clock anchored earlier.
• Keep the alarm at 6 AM on weekends, or close to it. A lie-in of an hour or less does far less damage than a three-hour one.
• Set a wind-down alarm for 9:30 PM. That's your cue to dim the lights, put the phone on the charger and start getting ready for bed.
• Stop caffeine by early afternoon. For a 10:15 PM bedtime, an 8 oz coffee should be finished by about 12:40 PM to fall below 25 mg by bedtime. Check your own drinks with the caffeine calculator.
• Put the alarm across the room if you're a snoozer. Snoozing breaks up the last, lightest part of your sleep.

Need a wake-up time other than 6:00? The sleep calculator works out bedtimes for any time in one tap.

If you missed your bedtime

Life happens. If it's already 11:30 PM, you have two good options: aim for 11:45 PM so you finish 4 full cycles at 6 AM, or accept a slightly broken final cycle and get to bed as soon as you can. More total sleep usually beats perfect cycle timing. Then get back on schedule the next night rather than sleeping in.