The 2016 UK Sleep Survey

Ever wondered whether your sleeping habits are normal?  How the North sleeps compared to the South?  Dreams have conducted a sleep survey of over 15,000 UK Adults to determine how the nation sleeps.  We present the most interesting results from the survey. 

Sleep Survey Respondents

First up, here’s a breakdown of respondents to the survey by geographical area:

2/3 of the respondents are female.  The age split has a slight weighting to 55+, compensated by a lower-than-average group of 18-24s. 

Sleep Survey Results

On average, UK residents spend 5 hours 5 minutes a week in bed either watching TV, watching a DVD/Film or working.  This average is stretched by the anomaly of people from the capital who spend 7 hours 43 minutes a week on these activities, a whole 2 hours 57 minutes more than the rest of the UK average (4 hours 45 minutes). 

Activities in bed

We asked everyone how long they spent on each of a range of activities, grouping the results into activities using blue light and activities which don’t.  Blue light activities consist of using devices which emit blue light, for example a laptop, tablet, phone or TV.  We can see that users spend on average 37 minutes 19 seconds more on blue light device activities a week than they do on non-blue light device in-bed activities. 

Watching TV | 62 mins 14 secs Reading a book | 54 mins 30 secs Browsing the web | 42 mins 59 secs Looking at social media | 38 mins 38 secs Talking to your partner | 36 mins 2 secs

Reasons for struggling to sleep

Too hot | 46.57% Stress | 38.23% Struggle to get comfotrable | 27.04% Money worries | 22.86% Snoring partner | 22.86%

Number of days between cleaning sheets

On average, how often do people change their sheets?  Once every 40 days. 

East of England | 41.59

East Midlands | 38.58

London | 42.42

North East | 39.07

North West | 40.89

Northern Ireland | 39.34

Scotland | 38.62

South East | 38.10

South West | 38.68

Wales | 39.84

West Midlands | 41.10

Yorkshire & The Humber | 41.10

Quality of sleep

Average life of mattress and bedding