Sleeping in on weekends is one of life’s luxuries. But is this habit bad for you or is it a good thing to do after a busy sleep-deprived work week?
Below, we’ll dive into the health benefits and impacts of sleeping in, whether it’s even possible to catch up on sleep at the weekends, and how to stop oversleeping on the weekends when it’s impacting your health and sleep.
“Sleeping in is demonized, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing," says Dr. Chester Wu. "It can help you catch up on lost sleep. But if you sleep for too long, sleeping in can mess with your body clock, which can cause health issues, low energy, and make it harder to sleep the next night. So if you’re sleeping in, keep it to an hour or so to avoid this.”
Dr. Chester Wu is double board certified in Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine, and provides sleep medicine services, medication management, and psychotherapy to adults at his private sleep medicine and psychiatry practice.
Sleeping in may be good for you.
Sleeping in can be good for your health and energy levels as it can help you pay back sleep debt.
Sleep debt is the amount of sleep you owe your body. If you don’t meet your sleep need — the genetically determined amount of sleep you need — you’ll start racking up sleep debt. And sleep debt can lead to everything from high blood pressure and heart disease to weight gain and diabetes — not to mention feeling low on energy all day.
Luckily, research shows you can catch up on sleep and pay back sleep debt.
To do this, you need to get more sleep than you usually need. So one way is by sleeping in.
Think you can’t make up for lost sleep? Catching up on sleep has been shown to improve:
One study found week-end catch-up sleep can lower your risk of depression. And another study even found the mortality rate of those who slept five hours or less during the week and then nine hours or more on the weekends was the same as those who consistently got seven hours of sleep.
The study concluded, “long weekend sleep may compensate for short weekday sleep.”
And a 2020 systematic review of sleep studies concluded, “although it would be better to obtain sufficient sleep on all 7 days of the week, catching-up on weekday sleep debt on the weekend appears to be better than not doing it.”
It did say more research was needed to confirm this, though, as a regular sleep schedule is also shown to be best for health.
A small lay-in on a Sunday may also just make you feel better. A 2021 study found intra-individual sleep duration as well as how you feel about your sleep both affect your daytime fatigue levels. So if you got a small lay-in and that made you feel like you got good sleep, you may feel more energy simply because of this.
One last thing to be aware of, you may temporarily need more sleep. This can happen when you’re recovering from:
In these times, sleeping in a little longer on the weekends (or any other morning) can help you get the extra sleep your body needs.
You can use RISE to find out how much sleep you need and whether you’re falling short of this during the week.
You may need more baseline sleep than you think. We looked at the sleep needs of 1.95 million RISE users aged 24 and up and found the median was eight hours. But almost half of those users needed eight hours or more sleep a night.
RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can view their sleep need here.
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Sleeping in may not be bad for you. But it all depends on how often you do it and how much you’re sleeping in by. If you sleep in too often or by too much you can disrupt your body clock.
Sleeping in can be a double-edged sword. It can lower sleep debt, but it can also cause circadian misalignment. This is when you get out of sync with your circadian rhythm, which is your roughly 24-hour body clock. When you sleep in, you cause a form of circadian misalignment known as social jetlag.
Research shows being out of sync with your circadian rhythm can lead to:
Beyond this, a 2023 study found sleeping in on the weekends is linked to harmful gut bacteria — and this can happen even if your sleep shifts by 90 minutes. Many of us sleep in for this long. In fact, about 87% of us go to bed at least two hours later on the weekend.
Beyond your health, being out of sync from irregular sleep times can tank your energy levels
One study found those with a regular sleep schedule felt more alert and less sleepy than those without a regular schedule, even if those people got enough sleep.
And our own data from RISE users shows those with consistent sleep times have lower sleep debt than those with inconsistent sleep times. And as you now know, sleep debt can lead to low energy and a whole host of negative health impacts.
Another drawback of sleeping in? If you sleep in for too long, you may struggle to sleep the next night, which could cause you to rack up sleep debt and all the ugly health impacts that come with it.
And sleeping in may not fix all your sleep deprivation problems. One study found your frontal lobe (a part of your brain) function takes a hit when sleep deprived, and this only partially recovers with recovery sleep. Participants in this study only got one night of recovery sleep, though, so more shut-eye could have helped.
So if you regularly get just six hours of sleep throughout the week, a one-hour lay-in at the weekend may not be enough to reverse the damage.
There’s also not enough research into catch-up sleep. One study states, “the long-term effects of a repeated sleep restriction/sleep recovery weekly cycle in humans remain unknown.”
Heads-up: You may not be getting any extra sleep at the weekend. Many of us go to bed later on weekends, meaning sleeping in may not lead to getting more sleep. You might even get less sleep. This can happen if you go to bed two hours later than usual, but only sleep in for an hour.
RISE can tell you whether you’re carrying any sleep debt and predict your circadian rhythm each day. You can then weigh up whether sleeping in would be beneficial to help you catch up on sleep, or whether you should stick to your regular sleep pattern.
RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can view their sleep debt here.
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Oversleeping on weekends may not cause health problems. Yes, there’s research linking oversleeping to obesity, cardiovascular disease, and even death. And some studies show a “U-curve” — or that too little sleep and too much sleep is bad for us. But these studies show correlation, not causation. Many of the studies on oversleeping come with problems — like relying on self-reported data or data from older populations.
A 2021 paper says you can’t oversleep in the same way you can overeat. And the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society says it’s not clear if there’s a health risk from sleeping for more than nine hours a night.
Plus, there’s the fact that most of us are probably sleep deprived and sleeping in is helping us catch up on sleep, not oversleep. So sleeping in on weekends may actually be good for your health if you can’t get enough sleep during the week.
The one thing to be aware of? Circadian misalignment. Sleeping in for long periods of time can cause you to become out of sync with your circadian rhythm, which can lead to low energy and an increased risk of health problems like diabetes, obesity, and depression. Try keeping your lay-ins to an hour or so to avoid this, and using afternoon naps to catch up on sleep if you need more shut-eye.
You can also use RISE to find out how much sleep you need and whether you’re actually oversleeping this amount.
You can learn more about oversleeping here, including when to worry about it.
Yes, you can make up for lost sleep on the weekends. Studies show you can reverse some of the negative effects sleep deprivation has on your health and mental performance.
More research is needed, but from what we know so far it seems that you can make up for short-term sleep debt (sleep you’ve missed out on recently). But it’s not clear yet whether you can make up for long-term sleep debt (sleep you’ve missed out on over months or years).
A canonical study restricted participants’ sleep to about five hours per night for seven nights. Participants then had two recovery nights of sleep.
They were scored on factors like:
As expected, participants scored significantly worse on all factors after the sleep restriction nights. But their scores bounced back to baseline levels after two nights of recovery sleep.
More recent studies have similar findings. A 2023 study looked at workers who cut their sleep short during the week and then caught up on sleep at the weekends. It found that those who caught up on two hours or more sleep at the weekend had a decreased risk of dyslipidemia (high cholesterol) compared to those who didn’t catch up on sleep.
The study stated, “sleeping more on weekends for workers who had a lack of sleep during the week can help prevent dyslipidemia.”
Not every study comes to this conclusion. Research from 2019 found sleeping for longer at the weekend didn’t prevent the insulin sensitivity and weight gain that sleep debt can cause. But participants didn’t get much extra sleep — only an hour or so in total over the weekend — so more sleep could have helped.
Overall it seems like, for some metrics, it’s possible to make up for lost sleep on the weekend — at least on a biological level.
Of course, just because it’s possible, doesn’t mean it’s easy.
You might struggle to sleep in for long enough if kids or other demands mean you have to be up by a certain time on your days off from work. And even with a clear calendar, you might find your circadian rhythm naturally wakes you up around the time your alarm clock usually rings.
RISE can predict your circadian rhythm each day. You’ll then see when your body naturally wants to wake up, and if you’re trying to sleep in beyond this.
You may also have a lot of sleep to catch up on and not be able to get fully caught up in one weekend.
Heads-up: You can’t “bank” extra sleep on the weekend if you know you’ve got a particularly busy week coming up. Sleep experts tend to agree that you can’t sleep for longer than you need. The best thing you can do here is make sure your sleep debt is as low as possible going into the week and catch up on sleep when you can. But beyond this, you can’t store up extra sleep for later.
You can learn more about how long it takes to recover from sleep deprivation here.
RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can see their circadian rhythm on the Energy screen here.
Here’s why you might find yourself sleeping in so much on the weekends:
Yes, it’s normal to oversleep on weekends. Many of us are sleep deprived and have a set wake-up time during the week. When it gets to the weekend, our bodies want to oversleep to catch up on sleep. If you missed out on two hours of sleep during the week, it would be normal to oversleep by two hours on the weekend, for example.
How much you oversleep on weekends will depend on how much sleep you’ve got to catch up on.
Want to get up earlier on weekends? We’ve rounded up ways to make getting out of bed easier here. One way is to improve your sleep hygiene to help you spend more time sleeping while in bed. RISE can send you daily reminders for 20+ healthy sleep habits to help.
RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can set up their 20+ in-app habit notifications here.
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Here’s how to catch up on sleep the right way:
Stop oversleeping on weekends by keeping your sleep debt low throughout the week, keeping a consistent sleep schedule (including not going to bed later on the weekend), and maintaining good sleep hygiene every day, so poor sleep doesn’t mean you have to sleep in longer to meet your sleep need.
If you regularly sleep for 10 hours or more on weekends, speak to your healthcare provider. They can test you for sleep disorders or health conditions that could be to blame.
We’ve got more tips on how to stop oversleeping here. And if you’re struggling to get going on weekend mornings, we’ve shared how to have more energy in the mornings here.
Sleeping in isn’t lazy or necessarily bad for you. In fact, it could help you catch up on sleep you’ve lost throughout the week. But it could also cause you to get out of sync with your circadian rhythm, which can lead to health issues and low energy.
Our advice? Try to get enough sleep each night, so you don’t need to sleep in. When that’s not possible, sleep in for only an hour or so.
The RISE app can tell you how much sleep debt you have and keep track of it as you chip away at it. Plus, RISE can predict your circadian rhythm each day to help you stay in sync with it (even when you sleep in). And the app can guide you through 20+ sleep hygiene habits to help you get a good night’s sleep, so you need less time in bed to hit your sleep need.
Don’t just take our word for it, though — 80% of RISE users say they get better sleep within five days.
Sleeping in is when you sleep in later than your usual wake-up time. Many of us do this at the weekend when we don’t need to be up at a specific time for work or school. Sleeping in can help you catch up on sleep you’ve missed out on during the week and may be protective against certain health conditions caused by sleep deprivation.
It may be good to sleep in, but it all depends on how often you’re doing it and how much you’re sleeping in by. Sleeping in can help you catch up on sleep you’ve lost recently, which may be protective against certain health conditions. But sleeping in for long periods of time can also cause you to get out of sync with your body clock, which can lead to low energy and health issues like depression and obesity. Sleep in for only an hour or so to minimize this risk.
Sleeping in may not be bad for you. It can help you catch up on recent sleep loss and reduce your odds of certain health issues. But sleeping in can also cause you to get out of sync with your body clock, which can lead to low energy and health conditions like depression and obesity. And regularly oversleeping is a common symptom in sleep disorders, like hypersomnia and sleep apnea, amongst many other chronic illnesses. But more often than not sleeping in isn't a harbinger of ill health.
Yes, it’s OK to sleep in sometimes. When used correctly, sleeping in can help lower your sleep debt. As long as your sleep-in doesn't exceed an hour later than your normal wake time, you will likely feel more refreshed upon waking without incurring circadian misalignment, which is linked to low energy and health issues like depression and obesity.
You may sleep so much on the weekends because you don’t get enough sleep during the week or you relax on your sleep hygiene habits, meaning you may wake up more often in the night and need more time in bed to get enough sleep. You may sleep in later on the weekends if you’re a night owl or you go to bed later than usual.
You should sleep in for an hour or so on weekends, or up to two hours if you need the extra sleep. Keeping lay-ins to an hour or so will prevent you from getting out of sync with your circadian rhythm, which can lead to low energy and health issues like depression and obesity. This extra hour of sleep will help you catch up on any sleep you’ve missed out on recently.
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