Are you tired? If you haven’t had enough sleep, nothing beats a nap to get you through the rest of the day. However, napping for too long or too short can make you feel worse.

If you’ve had a horrible night’s sleep, the prospect of a nap later in the day may be the only thing that gets you through the day.

A tactical snooze can help you feel more energized during the rest of the day.

However, you must perfect your technique. You risk feeling sluggish or disturbing your sleep quality later if you nap for too long or too close to bedtime.

Fortunately, sleep expert Kiera Pritchard of Eachnight.com has disclosed how to achieve the perfect nap – including how long it should be.

The ideal nap time is between 10 and 20 minutes or 90 minutes. This is due to the fact that sleep occurs in cycles.

A typical sleep cycle lasts 90 minutes and begins with light stages of sleep before transitioning into deep, rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep.

Because it’s such a short period of time, you could be tempted to nap for 30-60 minutes. When you wake up, though, you may have “sleep inertia,” according to Kiera.

This is the stage between sleep and awake that “can leave you feeling groggy and drowsy” and is not advised if you really need to focus for the rest of the day.

If you’re short on time, a 10- to 20-minute power nap is excellent for improving energy and alertness.

Kiera explained: “During a power nap, you stay in the first two stages of non-rapid eye movement – these are the lightest stages of sleep, which means you’ll wake up easily.

“Power naps provide immediate benefits. They boost alertness and performance levels and can decrease any feelings of sleepiness.

According to Kiera, the optimal nap length is 90 minutes, because it “allows you to complete one full sleep cycle.”

According to her, “waking up from these naps is generally easy.

“Since you experience each stage of sleep and wake up back at stage one, these naps leave you feeling refreshed and more awake, so they don’t cause sleep inertia like an hour-long nap can.

“A full sleep cycle can boost creativity and improve procedural and emotional memory. However, you should avoid taking 90-minute naps within seven hours of your scheduled bedtime to ensure it doesn’t interfere with your nightly sleep.”

At what time of day you should nap?

The optimal time for a snooze, according to Kiera, is “six to eight hours after waking.”

The sleep expert added: “For more people, this time is typically somewhere between 1 and 3pm.

“Napping any time after this is likely to interfere with your sleep schedule and may make it difficult to fall asleep at night.”

Avoid napping beyond mid-afternoon, or “beyond the rough midpoint of your usual wake time and bedtime.”

“For many sleepers, this cut-off point would be around 3 p.m. Napping too late can throw off your sleep schedule and make it challenging to get a full night’s rest,” the expert added.

Image Credit: Getty

You were reading: Napping anytime could be harmful – says expert revealing how long to Nap and best time