Whether you count sheep, meditate or fall asleep in front of the television, we all have our own special bedtime routines.

Getting to sleep of an evening is, however, perhaps much more complex than you might think.

And some of you may actually be getting the whole process all wrong.

Luckily for us, someone has created a ‘sleep calculator’ so we can work out when we need to hit the sack in the click of a button.

Apparently it’s all to do with sleep cycles rather than getting more hours of sleep. If you wake up at the wrong time during a sleep cycle, you’ll find yourself more tired – even if you were asleep for longer.

If you need to get up at 7am

Need to make sure you’re awake and getting out of bed at 7am? Then you need to go to bed at either 9.46pm or 11.16pm.

If you’re having a late night and you don’t fancy either of these, then 12.46am and 2.16am will also work.

The sleep calculator factors in the average of 14 minutes it takes people to naturally fall asleep, so you don’t necessarily need to be in bed by this time.

If you need to get up at 6am

To get up at 6am, you’re looking at a bedtime of 8.46pm, 10.16pm or even 11.46pm or – if you’re feeling like a real night owl – 1.16am.

How about 8am?

Don’t need to get up super early to get to work on time? Have no fear. Here’s what time you need to go to bed for an 8am rise: 10.46pm, 12.16am, 1.46am or 3.16am.

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