Getting more REM sleep comes down to protecting the later hours of your night, since REM cycles grow longer as the night progresses. Your first REM period lasts only about 10 minutes, while later ones can stretch up to an hour. Anything that fragments your sleep or cuts your night short disproportionately robs you of REM.
Most adults cycle through four to six sleep cycles per night, each lasting roughly 80 to 120 minutes. Because REM dominates the back half of those cycles, the most effective strategies focus on sleeping long enough, staying asleep through the night, and removing the specific substances and conditions that suppress REM.
Sleep Long Enough to Reach the Longest REM Periods
This is the simplest and most overlooked factor. If you consistently sleep six hours instead of seven or eight, you’re not just losing two hours of generic sleep. You’re losing the portion of the night where REM cycles are at their longest and most frequent. Someone who sleeps eight hours may get twice the REM of someone who sleeps six, not because their cycles are better, but because they’re actually present for the later ones.
Prioritizing total sleep time is the single highest-impact change you can make. If you’re currently getting under seven hours, extending your sleep will likely do more for your REM than any other adjustment on this list.
Keep Your Sleep Schedule Consistent
Your body’s internal clock anticipates when you’ll be asleep and times biological processes accordingly. REM sleep is tightly linked to your circadian rhythm, with the strongest drive for REM occurring in the early morning hours. When you go to bed and wake up at wildly different times, your brain’s timing of sleep stages gets misaligned, and you may spend less time in REM even if you’re logging enough total hours.
Aim to keep your bedtime and wake time within a 30-minute window, including weekends. Sleeping in two extra hours on Saturday morning feels restorative, but it shifts your circadian rhythm in a way that can take days to correct.
Keep Your Bedroom Cool
Bedroom temperature has a direct effect on REM stability. A room between 60 and 67°F (15.5 to 19.5°C) helps facilitate and stabilize REM sleep. When the room is too warm, your body has to work harder to regulate its core temperature, which can pull you out of REM or prevent you from settling into it fully.
If you tend to sleep hot, lighter bedding or a fan can help. The goal is a room that feels slightly cool when you first get in bed.
Avoid Alcohol Before Bed
Alcohol is one of the most reliable REM suppressors in everyday life. It fragments your sleep by causing brief awakenings throughout the night. Each of those micro-awakenings can reset your sleep cycle back to a lighter stage, cutting into the REM time you’d otherwise accumulate. Even a couple of drinks in the evening can meaningfully reduce your total REM for the night.
The closer you drink to bedtime, the stronger the effect. If you do drink, finishing several hours before sleep gives your body more time to metabolize the alcohol before your later, REM-heavy cycles begin.
Watch for Medication Effects
Several common medications suppress REM sleep substantially. Antidepressants are the most notable. SSRIs and older tricyclic antidepressants can reduce REM sleep by 70 to 85% in some studies. This suppression is generally well tolerated, and the mental health benefits of these medications typically outweigh the sleep architecture changes. But if you’re on an antidepressant and wondering why your sleep tracker shows almost no REM, this is likely the explanation.
Don’t stop or change any medication to chase more REM. If you’re concerned, talk to the prescribing doctor. Some antidepressants suppress REM less than others, and adjustments are sometimes possible.
Cannabis and REM
The relationship between cannabis and REM is less clear-cut than commonly believed. Early research suggested THC suppresses REM, but those studies used high doses in small groups. More recent research using lower, therapeutic doses has found mixed results, with many studies showing no significant REM suppression at all.
What is well-documented is the rebound effect: people who stop regular cannabis use often experience sleep disturbances, including a surge in vivid dreaming as REM rebounds. If you use cannabis regularly and feel your sleep quality is poor, a break may reveal whether it’s been affecting your sleep architecture.
Manage Stress and Cortisol
Stress doesn’t just make it harder to fall asleep. Elevated cortisol at night destabilizes REM sleep itself. Research has linked higher nighttime cortisol secretion to greater REM instability, meaning your REM periods become more fragmented and less restorative even if they show up on a sleep tracker.
The cortisol connection means that stress management isn’t just about relaxation before bed. Chronic daytime stress that keeps your stress-response system activated can affect REM quality hours later. Regular exercise, consistent wind-down routines, and addressing sources of ongoing stress all contribute to a hormonal environment where REM can function normally.
Exercise Regularly, but Mind the Timing
At least 30 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise can improve sleep quality that same night. The most well-documented benefit is an increase in deep sleep, but better overall sleep architecture supports REM indirectly by helping you sleep more soundly through the night and reducing the kind of fragmentation that cuts into later REM cycles.
Timing varies by person. Some people sleep fine after evening workouts. Others find that vigorous exercise close to bedtime keeps them wired. If you fall into the second group, finishing your workout at least one to two hours before bed gives your body time to come down from the elevated heart rate and endorphin release. The type of exercise matters less than consistency: resistance training, cycling, running, or even an active yoga class all contribute to better sleep when done regularly.
Protect the Last Hours of Sleep
Because REM concentrates in the final cycles of the night, anything that wakes you early has an outsized impact. An alarm set 90 minutes earlier than your body wants to wake costs you a disproportionate amount of REM. Light streaming into your bedroom at dawn, a pet that demands breakfast at 5 a.m., or a noisy environment in the early morning hours can all chip away at your richest REM window.
Blackout curtains, earplugs, or a white noise machine are simple tools that protect those last one to two hours of sleep. If your schedule forces an early alarm, the best compensating move is an earlier bedtime so you still hit seven to eight hours total. Sleeping in on occasion won’t rebuild a consistent REM deficit, but making sure your nightly sleep window is long enough will.