What temperature should a bedroom be for sleep?

Updated September 27, 2026.

The body sheds heat at the moment of falling asleep, so the thermostat matters more at night than most people expect. This page collects what hospitals, health services and sleep researchers report about bedroom temperature. It converts figures to Fahrenheit and shows where the sources disagree.

Short answer: For most adults, a bedroom between 60 and 68°F supports sleep, the range sleep experts typically recommend (Sleep Foundation). The Sleep Foundation's main guide names about 65°F as the ideal single setting (Sleep Foundation). Core temperature falls through the night while the hands and feet warm up, and a cool room makes that heat loss easier. Older adults may sleep well up to 77°F (Hebrew SeniorLife). The NHS puts a baby's room at 16 to 20°C (NHS).

This guide is for: people setting a thermostat at night, sharing a bedroom, looking after an older relative, or putting a baby down in a nursery.

Key Takeaways

Three numbers cover most bedrooms: a range for adults, a warmer band for people over 65, and a separate, fixed band for babies' rooms.

1. Adults: 60 to 68°F. Every general adult figure on the health pages we counted fell inside this band. The Sleep Foundation says experts typically recommend 60 to 68°F. Its main guide says most doctors favor a thermostat set between 65 and 68°F (Sleep Foundation).
2. Older adults: 68 to 77°F may suit. A Boston study of 50 older adults found sleep was most efficient and restful in that range. Sleep efficiency fell 5 to 10% as rooms warmed from 77 to 86°F (EurekAlert).
3. Babies: 16 to 20°C. That is roughly sixty-one to sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. The NHS says this range is ideal for the room a baby sleeps in, because overheating can increase the risk of SIDS (NHS).

Each figure above is the range a named source states. The sections below show where each number comes from and who it applies to, so each reader can match the advice to a real bedroom.

On This Page

Eight questions follow, starting with what health pages recommend and ending with the changes that keep a bedroom in range all night.

What do health websites say the ideal sleep temperature is?

Seven of the nine health pages we read gave a general adult figure, and every one of those figures fell between 60 and 68°F.

We read nine health and sleep-information pages on September 26, 2026, and counted the bedroom temperature each one states. We picked pages from hospitals, health services, research groups and sleep-information sites. Our method page explains how the counting works. The nine fell into three buckets:

• Five pages set the adult low end at 60°F. Four stop at 67°F and one goes to 68°F.
• Two pages center on 65°F. One gives 65 to 68°F and the other gives a single figure.
• Two pages give a range for one group only. One covers babies and one covers older adults.

The pages agree that a cool room helps far more than they agree on one number. The whole adult spread is 8 degrees, from 60 to 68°F. Anyone who already sleeps well inside that band has no reason, from these pages, to change the dial.

Why does a cool room help you fall asleep?

The body's core temperature falls as sleep begins, and a cool room lets heat leave through the hands and feet faster, which helps sleep come sooner.

Sleep and body heat run on the same daily clock. A 2019 review in Frontiers in Neuroscience looked at mammals active by day and by night. In both groups, sleep onset and a fall in core temperature occur together (Harding et al., 2019). That heat has to go somewhere; most of it leaves through the skin of the hands and feet. The same review notes that widening blood vessels there, called vasodilation, is a good predictor of sleep onset.

A warm room slows that exchange. A very cold one can disrupt sleep in a different way. Heat and cold both push sleep the wrong way. A review in the Journal of Physiological Anthropology found that both raise wakefulness and cut rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and slow wave sleep (Okamoto-Mizuno and Mizuno, 2012). Slow wave sleep is the deepest stage of the night, and REM is the stage most tied to dreaming.

Temperature is one of three room conditions that sleep advice keeps coming back to. Cleveland Clinic's sleep psychologist Michelle Drerup compares the bedroom to a cave. She says it "should be cool, dark and quiet to enhance your sleep" (Cleveland Clinic). Darkness is the second of those conditions; our guide to blackout curtains for a bedroom covers how to keep a room dark through the night.

Does your body temperature rise when you sleep?

No. Core temperature falls through the night, while the skin of the hands and feet warms by about one degree Celsius at sleep onset.

The two halves of that answer pull in opposite directions, which may be why you searched for it. Your core cools while your skin warms. A study that measured skin temperature through a smart bed explains how. Near sleep onset, more blood flows to the skin; that raises hand and foot temperature by about 1 °C and abdomen temperature by about 0.5 °C (PMC smart-bed study).

The drop in core temperature is small. During normal sleep, human core temperature falls slowly, by about 0.3 °C at most (Scientific Reports, 2024). That is roughly half a degree Fahrenheit. The fall starts before bed; body temperature naturally begins to decline about 1 to 2 hours before the usual bedtime, the lead author of a 2019 bathing review told Healio.

If you wake up hot, look at the bed before blaming your core. People use bedding to build a microclimate of warmth (31–35 °C) around the skin, which is 88 to 95°F. A heavy duvet in a warm room can push that layer past comfort.

Is it bad to sleep with a cold temperature in the room?

A cool room is fine when the bedding stays warm. A 2012 review found cold air harms sleep mainly in people sleeping with little or no cover.

What matters is what sits between you and the air. In semi-nude subjects, cold exposure affects sleep stages more than heat does. Once people have covers, cold exposure does not affect sleep stages, though bedding and clothing are critical (Okamoto-Mizuno and Mizuno, 2012). A cool room with warm covers is the arrangement the research supports.

Cold still has costs. The same review found that cold affects the heart's automatic responses during sleep, even when sleep stages hold steady. Cleveland Clinic's Michelle Drerup is direct about the floor: a bedroom below 60°F is too cold. In the cold, she adds, blood vessels tighten and breathing becomes shallow, which puts extra strain on the heart and blood vessels (Cleveland Clinic).

That strain is one more reason to keep your room at or above the bottom of the adult range. Below it, even your bedding has to work harder through the small hours, when the room is usually coldest.

If you like a cold room, keep your hands and feet warm rather than bundling up. The smart-bed study reports that warming the feet raised skin temperature at the extremities and shortened the time it took to fall asleep (PMC smart-bed study). A pair of loose socks is the simplest way to do that.

How hot is too hot for a bedroom at night?

Most adult guidance we counted tops out at 68°F, and humid heat makes a warm room worse because sweat cools the body less well.

No general adult figure in our count went above 68°F, and the Sleep Foundation's guide also stops its range there (Sleep Foundation). GoodRx quotes a sleep expert who names a bedroom that is too warm, or a blanket that is too heavy, as a common reason people wake at night (GoodRx).

Heat is also the more common problem in real bedrooms. With bedding and clothing in use, heat exposure increases wakefulness and cuts deep and REM sleep, and humid heat adds more strain (Okamoto-Mizuno and Mizuno, 2012).

The effect shows up across whole populations. A study of 765,000 US survey respondents linked warm nights to more reports of insufficient sleep. Each rise of 1 degree Celsius above normal meant about three more such nights per 100 people per month (University of California).

The table below is our judgement, built from the seven general adult figures in our count. It is not the finding of any single study.

Should older adults keep the bedroom warmer?

Possibly. A Boston study that tracked 50 older adults for nearly 18 months found they slept most efficiently at home between 68 and 77°F.

Most familiar advice was not built around older sleepers, and one long study suggests it may run cold for them. A researcher at Hebrew SeniorLife's Marcus Institute for Aging Research monitored sleep and bedroom temperature in 50 older adults for nearly 18 months (Hebrew SeniorLife blog). The team used wearable sleep monitors and room sensors.

Across nearly 11,000 person-nights, sleep was most efficient and restful at 68 to 77°F. Sleep efficiency dropped 5 to 10% as rooms warmed from 77 to 86°F (EurekAlert).

The authors also found large differences between people. Each person's ideal range varied (Hebrew SeniorLife), so the range works best as a starting point, not a rule.

Heat is the bigger risk at that age; a scoping review of nighttime heat and sleep in adults aged 45 and above cites a global study in which older people, women and low-income groups carried the heaviest burden (PMC scoping review).

If you look after an older relative, that points to two checks. Keep the room inside the study's range on summer nights, and choose bedding light enough to push aside easily. Hebrew SeniorLife also suggests light, breathable linens and blackout curtains to keep a bedroom cool (Hebrew SeniorLife). Our guide to blackout shades for a bedroom covers how to choose shades that block daylight.

What temperature should a baby's room be?

The NHS in Britain puts a baby's room at 16 to 20°C, roughly sixty-one to sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, because overheating raises SIDS risk.

US and UK sources put the number in slightly different places, so it helps to know which one you are reading. The NHS says all-night heating is rarely necessary and about 16 to 20°C is ideal (NHS). That range works out to roughly sixty-one to sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. US pages run a little warmer. The Sleep Foundation says infants may benefit from a bedroom up to 69°F (Sleep Foundation). Cleveland Clinic puts the range for babies and toddlers a bit higher, at 65 to 70°F (Cleveland Clinic).

All three agree that overheating is the danger. The NHS warns that babies can overheat from too much bedding or clothing, or from a room that is too hot. It advises you to check a baby's temperature by feeling the chest or the back of the neck. Cool hands or feet on your baby are nothing to worry about, it adds (NHS SIDS page).

How do you keep a bedroom at the right temperature?

Set the thermostat a few degrees lower at night, choose lighter bedding in summer, and try a warm bath one to two hours before bed.

Start with your room, then your bed, then your body. The Sleep Foundation advises reducing heat build-up during the day, turning down the thermostat at night, and choosing cooling bedding (Sleep Foundation). Cleveland Clinic suggests keeping a fan in the room so cooling down is easy on warm nights (Cleveland Clinic).

A warm bath sounds backward, but the evidence behind it is solid. A 2019 review from the University of Texas at Austin pooled earlier studies of bathing and sleep. The university reports that a bath 1 to 2 hours before bedtime, in water of about 104 to 109°F, can significantly improve sleep (UT Austin). The authors explain that warm water sends more blood from the core to the hands and feet, which carries heat out before bed (Sci.News).

A fan does two jobs at once. It moves air across the skin and makes a steady sound. If that sound helps you, our guide to white noise for sleep covers how to set it up. For couples, one thermostat setting plus separate blankets of different weights usually settles more arguments than the dial alone.

Common questions

Short answers to the questions people ask most often about bedroom heat, from fans and socks to hot weather and couples sharing a bed.

Can a bedroom be too warm for sleep?

Yes. The Sleep Foundation's guide tops out at 68°F for most adults (Sleep Foundation). Older adults are the exception, since the Boston study found efficient sleep up to 77°F (Hebrew SeniorLife).

Is 60°F too cold to sleep?

It sits right at the bottom edge of the adult advice. Cleveland Clinic treats anything below 60°F as too cold (Cleveland Clinic). The 2012 Okamoto-Mizuno review found cold air matters much less once bedding keeps the sleeper warm (Okamoto-Mizuno and Mizuno, 2012).

Do socks help you fall asleep?

They can help; warm hands and feet let heat leave your core. The smart-bed study notes that warming the feet raised skin temperature and shortened the time it took to fall asleep (PMC).

Does a fan help you sleep in a warm room?

It can. Cleveland Clinic suggests keeping a fan in the bedroom so cooling down is easy when you feel too warm (Cleveland Clinic). The steady sound may help you sleep as well.

What should couples do when they want different temperatures?

Set the room to suit the person who runs warmer, then let the cooler partner add a heavier blanket on their side. Adding a layer is easier than cooling a body, so this split usually works better than meeting in the middle.

Does hot weather make people lose sleep?

Yes. A Science Advances study of 765,000 US survey respondents linked warmer-than-normal nights to more reports of insufficient sleep (University of California).