Do you need less sleep as you get older?

The expert panels land on a small change, not a large one. The National Sleep Foundation's 18-member panel recommends 7–9 hours for adults and 7–8 hours for older adults over 65. The upper bound drops a notch, but the floor stays put: a 70-year-old does not suddenly need five hours.

At the same time it is true that older people sleep differently. In Ohayon's meta-analysis of sleep data from healthy people across the whole lifespan, total sleep time, sleep efficiency, the proportion of deep sleep and the proportion of REM sleep all decreased with age, while time to fall asleep and time awake after falling asleep increased. But the decisive finding is the timeline: most of these changes happened earlier in adulthood and levelled off after 60. Only sleep efficiency kept declining into old age. The picture of sleep collapsing year by year after retirement does not hold.

The key nuance comes from Mander and colleagues' review of sleep and ageing, which asks the question outright: do older adults need less sleep, or can they no longer generate the sleep they still need? Their conclusion leans clearly toward the latter. The brain mechanisms that build deep, consolidated sleep weaken with age, and the result is a more fragmented night despite a persisting need. That the poorer sleep tracks with poorer memory also argues against it being harmless or purposeful. In sum: a small drop in need is real, but the large decline seen in practice reflects lost ability, not lost need.

The myth lives on an observation that is easy to misread. You see an older relative awake at five and conclude that they need less sleep, when in fact they are lying awake because the night has fractured. Calling it a reduced need is also convenient in both directions: for the older person, a frustrating, fragmented sleep gets redefined as something normal and harmless, and in healthcare, sleep problems in older adults were long dismissed as a natural part of ageing rather than something to investigate. On top of that sits a small kernel of truth — that the recommendation does drop a notch after 65 — which is easily inflated into the idea that sleep no longer matters. A truth in miniature becomes a full-size excuse.

If you sleep less over the years but wake unrested, treat it as something to address, not as an inevitable part of getting older. Still aim for around 7–8 hours and give sleep the same room you always have. Early daylight, movement during the day and regular hours help the ageing circadian rhythm more than an early bedtime in a dark room. If you consistently sleep poorly despite making room for it, that is a question for a healthcare professional, not something to get used to.