Sleep quality can often be improved with a few habits right before bed. Putting down your phone, dimming the lights, staying away from blue screens, drinking herbal tea, or going to bed early are small routines suggested to establish a healthy rhythm. However, sometimes to improve sleep quality, you need to focus on more than just nighttime sleep duration. What time you wake up in the morning, how much sunlight you get, what time you drink coffee, or what you consume for dinner become invisible factors that determine how your night's sleep will go.
Therefore, one of the best things to do for deep sleep is to place your day into a more sustainable and regulated rhythm from start to finish. Because the body's transition to sleep does not happen suddenly. Collecting environmental signals starting from daytime hours, the human body begins to slow down in the evening as sunlight weakens and transitions through different stages throughout night sleep. One of the most valuable parts of this cycle is deep sleep.
According to expert sources, deep sleep is considered the third stage of NREM sleep and is closely linked to the body's repair processes, the immune system, memory, and the feeling of waking up refreshed. Although deep sleep hours vary from person to person, this duration mostly corresponds to about a quarter of total sleep. However, many factors such as overall health status, age, gender, and sleep quality affect this duration. For this reason, for a healthy approach, instead of focusing on numbers, the way you start the day and your energy levels during the day should also be taken into account.
So, what is deep sleep, why is it so important, and how can deep sleep be increased?
What is Deep Sleep and Why is It So Important?
Although sleep is thought of as a single piece of rest, our body and brain pass through several repeating sequential stages throughout the night. These stages are divided into two groups: NREM sleep and REM sleep. NREM sleep consists of three stages within itself. The first stage is the sleep onset interval where a person can easily be awakened. The second stage is the light sleep stage where the body slows down a bit more, and heart rate and body temperature begin to drop. The third and final stage of NREM sleep is called the deepest sleep stage. In this stage, while breathing and heart rhythm shift to a calmer pattern, an intense recovery and resting process begins in the body. For this reason, waking someone up from deep sleep can be harder compared to light sleep. It is also normal for someone awakened during this stage to experience grogginess, disorientation, or trouble coming to their senses.
Following the deep sleep stage, where brain waves slow down and muscles relax, the body passes into a lighter sleep stage again, and the cycle is completed with REM sleep, which is associated with rapid eye movements and dreams. These transitions between different stages of sleep repeat several times throughout the night; deep sleep generally occurs more prominently in the first half of the night, while REM sleep becomes more pronounced toward morning.
Deep sleep is a critical sleep stage where brain waves drop to their lowest level and physical regeneration intensifies. The main changes experienced in the body during this stage are:
Brain activities, heart rate, and breathing drop to their lowest levels.
Body muscles completely relax, and body temperature and blood pressure drop.
New information learned during the day is transferred from short-term memory to long-term memory.
Growth hormone release increases. This ensures development in children, and cell regeneration along with damaged tissue repair in adults.
Deep sleep is considered essential for the body's physical recovery processes. Muscle repair, immune system support, hormone balance, and an overall sense of renewal are associated with this stage. However, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question "How many hours should deep sleep be?" Deep sleep duration in adults can vary according to age, health status, sleep schedule, and daily habits. Nevertheless, for healthy sleep, the proportion of deep sleep within total sleep should be around 20% to 25%. Conditions such as waking up frequently at night, going to bed late, or fragmented sleep interrupt the deep sleep stage, which can affect morning energy and daytime attention levels.
The Effect of Your Morning Routine on Your Night Sleep
The idea of regulating the first hours of the day for a healthy sleep might sound surprising. However, a morning routine resets internal balances by adjusting the body's biological clock. Especially getting sunlight after waking up helps slow down the secretion of melatonin, the sleep hormone, and increase the secretion of serotonin, the happiness hormone. This hormonal shift regulates the circadian rhythm, making the sleep preparation process that starts in the evening hours easier. Waking up at similar times every day—including weekends—can help balance your sleep rhythm.
The average deep sleep hours in your night's sleep can settle into a more sustainable rhythm with these small changes in your morning routine:
Get daylight after waking up: Opening the curtains, stepping out onto the balcony, or taking a short morning walk sends a strong wake-up signal to your biological clock.
Fix your wake-up time as much as possible: Waking up at vastly different times every day can make it harder to fall asleep at night.
Don't leave caffeine for late hours: It takes an average of 4 to 6 hours for caffeine to be eliminated from the body. Consuming caffeinated drinks late can make it difficult to fall asleep or get into a deep sleep at night.
Stay active during the day: Light walks, stretching exercises, or yoga practices support sleeping more comfortably at night by relaxing the body and keeping stress away.
Keep daytime naps short: Innocent-looking power naps during the day can cause night sleep to be fragmented if shifted to late hours or extended too long.
Factors That Adversely Affect Deep Sleep
Improving deep sleep is not just about the time spent in bed. Certain repeating daily habits can lower sleep quality even if they make it easier to fall asleep. Common factors that can make deep sleep difficult can be listed as follows:
Irregular sleep schedules
Consuming caffeine late in the evening
Eating heavy meals right before going to bed
Alcohol consumption
Using a phone in bed
Stressful mental load
An uncomfortable sleeping environment
Although you need a consistent sleep schedule for sleep hygiene, creating a wind-down routine before bed and making the bedroom comfortable are of great importance. Even though these recommendations sound simple, the practical answer to how to increase deep sleep is often hidden in these basic habits.
How to Create a Step-by-Step Sleep Ritual?
A good sleep ritual doesn't have to be a rigid checklist that starts five minutes before getting into bed. What is more effective and sustainable is creating a transition period that gradually calms the evening down. Small adjustments starting from the evening hours up to bedtime send a "the day is ending" message to the body and mind, helping build a healthy sleep habit.
Plan your dinner in a balanced way: Eating a heavy meal very late keeps the stomach and digestive system active, preventing the body from slowing down. A light yet satisfying dinner helps you feel more comfortable at night. Balanced plates containing protein, vegetables, and complex carbohydrates can support the transition to sleep by reducing sudden blood sugar fluctuations.
Review your caffeine and alcohol timings: Consuming evening coffee, strong black tea, or energy drinks are among the factors that complicate falling asleep at night. As for alcohol, although it may seem to make falling asleep easier for some people, it can cause frequent awakenings later in the night and lead to waking up tired. If you don't want to experience deep sleep issues, tracking the timing of these two habits can be a good start.
Gradually reduce screen time: Being exposed to the blue light of a phone or tablet while lying in bed forces the mind to stay awake, delaying the transition to sleep. Especially being exposed to fast data signals like social media, emails, and news feeds can also impact morning brain fog. If putting down your phone all at once feels hard, you can try small steps like reducing screen brightness first, limiting notifications, or leaving the phone outside the bed.
Create a mental unloading space: Writing down tasks that come to your mind before sleeping onto a quick list and establishing simple daily routines can help relax the mind. Jotting down a few lines, doing short breathing exercises, or reading a few pages of a book reduces thoughts carried into bed at night, allowing you to fall asleep more comfortably.
Increase bedroom hygiene: A cool, dark, and quiet room always positively affects sleep quality. An overly warm room can increase night sweats and waking frequency. Uncomfortable sleeping equipment that fails to provide spinal support increases the risk of not waking up rested and comfortable. Your choice of curtains in the bedroom, having healthy and comfortable sleep equipment, and using small additions like eye masks and earplugs can make a big difference in your routine.
Follow the same sequence every night: For a sleep ritual to settle into a routine, it requires some repetition. Even a simple sequence applied every day—like taking a shower, putting on pajamas, dimming the lights, doing light stretching, and reading a book—sends familiar signals to your body, supporting deep sleep durations.
Don't obsess over sleep trackers: Although wearable technologies and tracking devices used to boost sleep quality offer valuable insights into understanding sleep habits, they can turn into a source of stress that worries you in the long run. Obsessing excessively over how long deep sleep should be during night's sleep can sometimes be misleading. When the goal shifts from creating a perfect night routine toward bodily and mental well-being, it becomes possible to build a slower, stress-free rhythm.
Sleeping in Nature at Richmond Nua
Another factor that heavily impacts sleep quality is the environment we are in. Traffic, screen light, noise, intense pace, and mental fatigue that persist throughout the day in the city can be carried into bed at night, threatening sleep health. Sometimes, instead of tracking sleep data for long periods or making drastic lifestyle changes to sleep better, you just need to connect more with nature. Located on the shores of Lake Sapanca as Turkey's first destination spa hotel, Richmond Nua rejuvenates both your body and soul.
A few days spent in nature at Richmond Nua can be a great starting point for gathering internal balance and regulating your sleep rhythm. Blending Lake Sapanca with lush forest views and personalized wellness programs, the peaceful atmosphere clears bodily and mental clutter, supporting the preparation process for sleep. The tranquil ambiance, relaxing spa, and massage areas transform the vacation experience from an ordinary stay into a restful care ritual that slows down the body.
If you want to reorganize your sleep quality, start the day feeling more vibrant, and step away from the city pace to open up a genuine space of rest for your body, you can discover Richmond Nua's nature-intertwined atmosphere. Positioned by the shores of Lake Sapanca, Richmond Nua offers a peaceful escape to support your deep sleep routine with its serene environment and experiences focused on renewal. With a short wellness getaway you give yourself in this marvelous location, re-evaluating your inner balance becomes much easier.
