How to Sleep During the Day After a Night Shift

The best way to sleep after a night shift is to go to bed soon after you get home, in a room that is as dark, cool and quiet as you can make it. Keep bright morning light out of your eyes, stop caffeine well before the end of the shift, and skip the nightcap. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) also suggests sleeping as long as you can, because night workers tend to get less sleep, and worse sleep, than day workers ^[1].

Go to bed as soon as you can

You get home at 8 a.m. It's tempting to empty the dishwasher, answer messages and "unwind" until noon. NIOSH advises the opposite: head to bed when you get in and leave the morning chores, because sleep you bank before about 2 p.m. tends to leave you feeling more rested ^[1]. If hunger would keep you awake, have a small meal with some protein and carbohydrates first, something like cereal and milk ^[1].

Your body clock is part of the reason. It is still set up for daytime wakefulness, so the later you start, the more of your sleep lands in hours when it is nudging you to get up. Not everyone can go straight to bed, of course. The Sleep Foundation points out that the schedule that works best also depends on how much sleep you need and on your family and social obligations ^[9]. Whatever you settle on, do it the same way every workday.

Keep morning light out, but not at the wheel

Morning light hitting your eyes sets off the hormonal changes that switch on your body's daytime alerting system, and the blue part of daylight has the strongest effect ^[3]. A sunny commute after a night shift is a bit like pressing your body clock's "good morning" button just as you want to go to sleep.

NIOSH suggests putting on blue-blocking sunglasses, ideally wraparound, or very dark ones before you step into daylight, and keeping them on until you are in your darkened bedroom ^[2]. There is a big catch, though. That same light is also keeping you alert, so dark glasses can make drowsy driving more likely. NIOSH's view is that dark glasses on the way home are safest when you are the passenger, not the driver ^[3]. If you are behind the wheel, staying awake comes first and your body clock second. And if you feel very sleepy, leave the car: carpool, call a cab, catch the bus or sleep somewhere near work first ^[2].

Make the bedroom dark, cool and quiet

Daytime sleep has to compete with sunshine, traffic, deliveries and everyone else's day. Darkness matters most. A very dark bedroom helps sleep ^[3], so use blackout blinds or an eye mask and block the light that sneaks under the door ^[1]. An expert consensus on indoor lighting recommends keeping the sleep environment as dark as possible, at no more than about 1 lux of melanopic light at the eye ^[7]. That guidance wasn't written with shift workers in mind, but the goal is the same at 9 a.m. as at midnight. For bathroom trips, a dim red nightlight is less likely to wake your brain up than a bright overhead light ^[3].

Then deal with temperature and noise. Keep the room cool and add covers if you need them, and use earplugs, a fan or a white-noise machine to mask traffic and household sounds ^[4].

Caffeine and alcohol in the last hours of your shift

Coffee at 2 a.m. can get you through the night. Coffee at 5 a.m. can cost you your morning's sleep. It takes your body about 5 to 6 hours to clear half the caffeine in a cup, and some people take much longer, so a cup near the end of a shift can leave enough in your system to make you restless when you finally lie down ^[5]. NIOSH suggests having caffeine early in the shift and stopping a few hours before it ends ^[5]. To see how much would still be circulating at your bedtime, try the caffeine calculator.

The after-work drink is a similar trap. Alcohol helps you fall asleep faster, but when researchers pooled the studies on healthy volunteers, they found it increases sleep disruption in the second half of sleep at every dose tested ^[6]. For a day sleeper, that second half is exactly when the street outside is getting louder. NIOSH is blunt about it: alcohol helps you drop off but causes early awakening and disturbed sleep ^[5].

Split sleep: a main block plus a top-up

Many night workers simply can't get seven unbroken hours during the day, and that's fine. The Sleep Foundation notes that a single block of seven or more hours is best, but people with daytime responsibilities can sleep in two blocks: the first at a consistent time every day, the second wherever it fits ^[9].

In real life that might mean sleeping from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., getting up for the school run, and napping from 5 to 6:30 p.m. before work. NIOSH also treats napping as a sensible way to add sleep, since night workers tend to run short ^[1]. The nap before work has its own rules, which you'll find in our guide on whether to sleep before a night shift, and the night shift sleep calculator can place both blocks around your shift times.

Protect your sleep from family, phone and deliveries

A lot of broken daytime sleep has nothing to do with your body clock. It's the doorbell, the dog, the group chat. NIOSH suggests asking family and friends not to disturb you during your sleep hours ^[1], and setting your phone to "do not disturb" with exceptions for a few emergency contacts ^[4]. A note on the door for couriers and a shared calendar showing your sleep time cost nothing and can save a lot of 11 a.m. wake-ups.

Signs of shift work disorder

Struggling for the first few weeks of nights is normal. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine says that if you still have trouble falling or staying asleep after several weeks, or you feel tired even after sleeping 7 to 8 hours, you may have shift work disorder. People with it may sleep up to four hours less than the average worker ^[8].

See a doctor if your work schedule has caused a sleep problem for a month or more and it is affecting your work, family or social life ^[8]. Get checked, too, if you snore loudly, someone notices pauses in your breathing, or you find yourself nodding off while driving, because these can point to other sleep problems that shift work can mask.

Daytime sleep is harder than night sleep, but you can make it work. Get to bed early in the day, keep the light out, and guard those hours like an appointment.