There is a peculiar frustration in being tired all evening, finally getting into bed, and discovering that your mind and body have other plans.
You were ready to sleep twenty minutes ago. You might even have struggled to stay awake on the sofa. But now you’re in bed, you’re noticing every sound in the house, and you’re beginning to wonder whether tomorrow will be another day spent running on too little rest.
The hours before bed can influence how easily we fall asleep. But I think much of the advice about evening routines has become unnecessarily complicated. It can sound as though a good night’s sleep requires the discipline of a professional athlete, an expensive mattress, and a perfectly timed series of rituals.
Most of us have lives that are considerably less orderly than that.
Fortunately, many of the habits worth trying are straightforward, inexpensive, and flexible enough to fit around a normal evening. Here are five that deserve a place on the list.
1. Give your evening a gentler landing
Think about the difference between finishing dinner, answering a few messages, watching a lively television program, and going straight to bed, versus having a little space between the day’s activity and the moment you turn out the light.
That space is what we’re trying to create.
The National Institute on Aging recommends developing a bedtime routine, with activities such as reading, listening to music, or taking a warm bath.
You don’t need a rigid sixty-minute schedule. In fact, if trying to follow a routine makes you more anxious about bedtime, it rather defeats the purpose.
Instead, look for a natural point in your evening when the day’s demands can begin to recede. You might finish anything that genuinely needs doing, change into comfortable clothes, and spend a little time with a book or some music.
If you share your home with someone whose evening habits are different from yours, the routine can still be personal. One person can enjoy a television program while another goes upstairs to read. The point isn’t to impose a household bedtime.
It’s to give yourself a recognizable transition.
2. Make the light match the hour
A brightly lit kitchen is useful when you’re preparing dinner. It’s less useful when you’re trying to convince your body that the day is nearly over.
Light helps regulate our internal clock, and bright light late in the evening can interfere with the signals that prepare us for sleep.
You needn’t sit in near-darkness. Switching off a bright overhead light and using a smaller lamp may be enough to make the room feel distinctly different.
Screens deserve some consideration too. The light they emit can matter, but so can what you’re doing on them. Reading a mildly interesting article is one thing; becoming absorbed in an argument or scrolling through upsetting news is quite another.
The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute recommends limiting bright artificial light during the hour before bedtime.
I wouldn’t make this an absolute prohibition on television or phones. If a favorite program is one of the pleasures of your evening, it’s worth considering how and when you watch it rather than declaring it forbidden.
And while we’re talking about light, don’t overlook the other end of the day. Natural light after waking helps reinforce the body’s daily rhythm. A better evening often begins with a reasonably consistent morning.
3. Take a second look at your evening drink
Some of the things we associate with relaxing aren’t particularly helpful for sleep.
Alcohol is the clearest example. A glass of wine may make you feel sleepy at first, but alcohol can make sleep lighter and increase the likelihood of waking during the night. The National Institute on Aging recommends avoiding alcohol as part of a healthy sleep routine.
Caffeine is another one worth noticing. Its effects can last for hours, and people differ in how sensitive they are to it. That afternoon coffee may be perfectly compatible with sleep for one person and surprisingly disruptive for another.
It isn’t only coffee, either. Tea, cola, energy drinks, and some chocolate contain caffeine.
Then there are large evening meals and the amount we drink close to bedtime. A very heavy dinner may be uncomfortable, while plenty of liquid just before bed can mean more trips to the bathroom.
None of this means you need a special bedtime drink. If you like a cup of caffeine-free herbal tea, enjoy it. Just don’t feel obliged to buy a particular blend or supplement on the promise that it will solve your sleep.
A useful experiment is to notice what happens when you move your last caffeinated drink earlier, or change one evening habit, rather than trying to overhaul everything at once.
4. Give tomorrow’s thoughts somewhere to go
A quiet bedroom has a remarkable ability to bring unfinished business to mind.
The appointment you need to make. The message you forgot to answer. Something a friend said that you’re still turning over. An important task that suddenly feels much more urgent than it did at lunchtime.
If this happens to you, a piece of paper may be more useful than another relaxation technique.
Before going to bed, write down the things you don’t want to forget tomorrow. You don’t have to solve them. You only need to make a note of what requires your attention.
There’s some interesting research behind this simple idea. In a 2018 experiment published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, researchers asked 57 healthy young adults to spend five minutes writing either a list of future tasks or a list of things they’d already completed. Those writing about future tasks fell asleep more quickly.
It’s a small laboratory study in younger adults, not proof that a bedtime list treats insomnia in later life. But it offers a plausible reason to try something that costs almost nothing.
And there is no requirement to keep a gratitude journal, rehearse affirmations, or turn your bedside table into a personal-development workstation.
A simple list will do.
5. Let the bedroom do its main job
A bedroom doesn’t have to resemble a luxury hotel to be comfortable for sleep. It needs to work for the person sleeping in it.
For some people, the biggest improvement is blocking light from the street. For others, it’s reducing noise, finding comfortable bedding, or adjusting the temperature.
The general advice is to keep the room quiet, dark, and comfortably cool. But there is no single ideal temperature for everybody, and individual comfort matters.
One recommendation worth considering is to keep wakeful activities largely out of bed. If you regularly work, watch television, or spend long periods scrolling there, your bed may become a place associated with being alert rather than sleeping.
That doesn’t mean you need to rearrange your whole home. It may simply mean moving your late-evening reading to a comfortable chair, then going to bed when you’re sleepy.
And if you’re lying awake for a long time, getting increasingly frustrated, it can be more helpful to get up for a quiet activity and return when sleepiness returns than to spend the next hour trying to force yourself to sleep.
The aim is a bedroom that supports rest, not one that has passed an inspection.
When five habits aren’t enough
There is a limitation to articles like this one, and it’s important enough to say plainly.
Good sleep habits can help, but persistent sleep problems are not necessarily the result of poor habits.
Pain, medication side effects, menopause symptoms, sleep apnea, restless legs, and other health conditions can all affect sleep. Loud snoring accompanied by gasping or pauses in breathing, severe daytime sleepiness, or sleep difficulties that continue despite changes to your routine are good reasons to speak with a healthcare professional.
And if you’re dealing with chronic insomnia, there is an established treatment beyond general sleep advice. Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, or CBT-I, is recommended as an initial treatment by the American College of Physicians.
You don’t need to keep collecting bedtime tips indefinitely when the problem deserves a more specific assessment.
A more complete way to work on your sleep
These five habits are useful starting points, but they don’t answer every question about sleep after sixty. Perhaps your main problem isn’t falling asleep at all. Perhaps it’s waking much too early, feeling exhausted despite a full night in bed, or wondering which changes are normal and which are worth investigating.
That’s why we created Sleeping Well After Sixty, a practical guide that goes beyond the evening routine.
It explains why sleep can change with age, how the body clock works, what to consider when the mind won’t settle, and how everyday habits interact with sleep. There are also sections on medical causes worth checking, along with printable tools to help you understand your own sleep patterns.
You don’t need to change all five habits tonight. Choose the one that seems most relevant to your own evening and see whether it makes a difference over time.
Sometimes that will be enough to improve a routine. Sometimes it will help you discover that your sleep problem needs a different kind of attention.
Either is useful information.