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What Is A Sleep Diary?

What Is A Sleep Diary?

When you suffer from interrupted or irregular sleep, many medical experts will encourage you to keep a sleep diary as part of your treatment plan. But what is a sleep diary exactly? What details should it contain, and is there a sleep diary app that can do the hard work for you?

Here at Happy Beds, we've taken the time to put together this article which will help you to understand more about what sleep diaries do. Read on to find out.

What is a Sleep Diary?

A sleep diary is a daily record of your sleep habits. Often also known as a 'sleep log' or a 'sleep journal', they are popular among parents hoping to get their children into a routine or adults who feel fatigued.

Over a period of time, a diary is used to evaluate a person's sleep and identify any recurring bad habits or interruptions, helping to diagnose a sleep disorder.

What Should a Sleep Diary Contain?

There are many different formats a sleep diary can take. However, most will simply be a notebook where the following details are noted down following each sleep:

  • Bedtime
  • Wake-up time
  • How long it took to fall asleep (roughly)
  • Number of sleep interruptions, and the period if prolonged
  • Number of daytime naps (if any)
  • Medication, exercise and any caffeine taken

If you'd like to consider making your own sleep diary, then there are plenty of examples available online for you to at. We've found this great and detailed example of a sleep diary created by the Sleep Foundation that may be of use to you:

sleep log sheet

Are There Sleep Diary Apps?

If you think you may forget to fill out a sleep diary daily, downloading a sleep app could help - especially if your phone is permanently attached to your hip. There are many different free and paid sleep diary apps that can help monitor your snooze time, REM sleep cycles and provide tips for improving rest quality. Some of the most popular include:

Sleep As Android

This is primarily an intelligent alarm clock app that helps wake you gently in the morning. However, it also has decent sleep cycle tracking capabilities and is compatible with wearable tracking devices such as Galaxy Watches and Fitbits.

It can score your sleep on duration, deficit, deep sleep percentage, snoring, efficiency and irregularity. Should you want to, you can even record your sleep talking using the app.


This is the number one snore app and monitors over a million nights of snoring per month. Beyond snoring, it records sleep statistics and suggests remedies.

Sleep Time

This is a sleep analysis app and an alarm clock in one. It tracks your sleep cycle and quality, measures your resting heart rate when you wake up, and provides soothing soundscapes, to name a few features.


An Apple app that can sync up with your Apple Watch, Pillow is a smart sleep assistant and will automatically analyse your sleep cycles.

Like the other apps on this list, it has audio recording technology and alarm options. It can also suggest an optimal bedtime based on your recorded data, show your sleep trends, and allows you to add notes should you want to track the influence of food, drink, medication or exercise on your quality and length of sleep.

Sleep Cycle

Sleep Cycle aims to help you sleep better and wake up rested using its smart alarm clock and sleep pattern analysis.

For a closer look at sleep monitoring tech such as Sleep Cycle, read Fitbit vs Sleep Cycle: The Battle of the Slumber Sensors.

image of sleep cycle app

Want to Improve Your Sleep?

If you or a loved one are suffering from poor sleep, a diary or an app can definitely help improve your understanding of the slumber you get. A new orthopaedic mattress could also aid sleep by providing a more comfortable and supportive foundation. Why not upgrade your mattress to an orthopaedic mattress today?

Do you keep a sleep diary? How do you organise yours? Let us know on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter!

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*Main image credit: anyaivanova/freepik