Yes, most sleepwalkers have their eyes open. It’s one of the most common and unsettling features of sleepwalking, and it catches many people off guard. Sleepwalkers typically walk around with a glazed, glassy-eyed expression, and they can navigate furniture, doorways, and stairs while appearing to stare right through you.
Why Sleepwalkers’ Eyes Stay Open
Sleepwalking is not like dreaming. It happens during deep, non-REM sleep, usually in the first few hours of the night. The brain enters a strange hybrid state where some regions wake up while others remain in deep sleep. The motor areas that control movement and the emotional processing centers activate, but the higher-level thinking and awareness regions stay offline, locked in slow-wave sleep.
This split is called sleep-wake dissociation. The parts of the brain responsible for walking, opening doors, and avoiding obstacles are functionally awake. The parts responsible for judgment, memory formation, and full conscious awareness are not. Your eyes open because the motor system is active, but the “you” behind them is largely absent.
What Sleepwalkers Can Actually See
Sleepwalkers can process enough visual information to move through their environment without bumping into things. They navigate obstacles, walk down hallways, and even open doors or windows. But this isn’t normal vision. Brain imaging shows decreased blood flow to the frontal and parietal areas during sleepwalking episodes. These regions handle complex perception, spatial reasoning, and decision-making. So while basic visual processing works well enough to avoid a coffee table, the sleepwalker isn’t truly “seeing” the world the way you do when awake.
If you’ve ever watched someone sleepwalk, you’ve probably noticed the blank, distant look. Their eyes are open but unfocused, with a glassy quality that looks distinctly different from someone who is awake and alert. They may look at you without any sign of recognition.
Sleepwalkers Can Talk, Too
Open eyes aren’t the only thing that makes sleepwalking look deceptively like wakefulness. A 2024 study published in the journal SLEEP found that about 82% of sleepwalkers reported having conversations during episodes. When researchers monitored sleepwalkers at home with video recordings, they found that when a bed partner was awake and tried to engage the sleepwalker, an actual back-and-forth dialogue happened about 66% of the time. Sleepwalkers initiated those conversations about half the time themselves.
These exchanges are typically short, averaging about two back-and-forth exchanges per episode. The content often doesn’t make sense or revolves around imagined scenarios, like intruders in the bedroom. Talking alone and screaming were even more common than talking to another person, reported by over 90% of sleepwalkers in the study. So a sleepwalker can look at you with open eyes, respond to your questions, and still have no awareness of the interaction and no memory of it the next morning.
How Common Sleepwalking Is
Sleepwalking is far more common in children, affecting about 5% of kids in any given year, with lifetime estimates as high as 17%. In adults, the current prevalence drops to around 1.5%, though 2 to 4% of young adults still regularly sleepwalk, often carrying the behavior forward from childhood. These numbers likely undercount the true rate because many episodes go unwitnessed. If no one sees you sleepwalk and you don’t remember it, you’d never know it happened.
Genetics play a significant role. First-degree relatives of sleepwalkers are about 10 times more likely to sleepwalk than the general population.
What Triggers an Episode
Sleep deprivation is one of the most reliable triggers. Anything that deepens or disrupts slow-wave sleep can set off an episode: stress, fever, alcohol, irregular sleep schedules, or sleeping in an unfamiliar environment.
Certain prescription sleep medications carry a particularly notable risk. The FDA added its strongest warning label to three common insomnia drugs (eszopiclone, zaleplon, and zolpidem, sold under brand names like Lunesta, Sonata, and Ambien) after reports of serious injuries and deaths from sleepwalking behaviors. These episodes occurred even at the lowest recommended doses, after just one dose, and in people with no prior history of sleepwalking. Combining these medications with alcohol, anti-anxiety drugs, or opioids increases the risk further. Anyone who has had a sleepwalking episode on one of these medications should not take it again.
How Long Episodes Last
Most sleepwalking episodes are brief, lasting only a few minutes. The sleepwalker gets up, moves around, and either returns to bed on their own or can be gently guided back. In rare and severe cases, episodes can stretch to several hours, though this is uncommon. The episodes almost always emerge from the deepest stage of sleep during the first third of the night.
How to Respond to a Sleepwalker
The old advice that waking a sleepwalker is dangerous is mostly myth, but it’s not entirely wrong either. Waking someone mid-episode won’t cause a heart attack or brain damage, but it will leave them confused and disoriented. In rare cases, a startled sleepwalker may react with fear or anger toward whoever woke them. They may take several minutes to become fully oriented.
The safest approach is to gently guide the sleepwalker back to bed without trying to wake them. Speak softly if you need to, and steer them by the arm. They’ll typically settle back into normal sleep without ever registering the interaction. If episodes are frequent, making the sleeping environment safer matters more than any in-the-moment response: securing windows, locking exterior doors, and clearing obstacles from walkways reduces the chance of injury during an episode no one witnesses.
Sleepwalking vs. Acting Out Dreams
Sleepwalking with open eyes is sometimes confused with a different condition called REM sleep behavior disorder, where people physically act out their dreams. The two look similar from the outside but come from completely different sleep stages. Sleepwalking arises from deep non-REM sleep, involves open eyes and walking, and typically affects children and young adults. REM sleep behavior disorder occurs during dream sleep, usually involves thrashing or punching while lying in bed with eyes closed, and predominantly affects older adults. REM sleep behavior disorder is also closely linked to neurodegenerative conditions like Parkinson’s disease, making the distinction clinically important.