Best and Worst U.S. Cities for Sleep

One in four Americans experiences sleep problems each year, which got us wondering if some cities were more conducive than others to a good night’s rest. When we set out to determine the best and worst cities for sleep, we wanted to look at all of the major reasons that people experience sleep disruptions, because often the relationship between sleep and other factors like our environment, our mental and physical health, and our personal habits is complex and closely connected.

To compile our ranking, we started with the CDC’s list of 500 cities and compared them to determine sleep success in three key areas: sleep quality, sleep quantity, and sleep timing. To measure sleep quality, we looked at environmental and health factors that frequently contribute to poor sleep, and used a survey to assess how poor sleep hygiene and bedtime habits impact sleep quality.

To gauge sleep quantity, we used the CDC’s short sleep duration report to compare how many hours of sleep people get in different cities. Finally, when considering sleep timing, we looked at factors that frequently contribute to sleeplessness due to mental and emotional stress, like unemployment rate, the number of mentally unhealthy days people experience each month, and access to help. Read a full description of our methodology and sources below.

The 10 Best Cities for Sleep

The cities that scored the highest for sleep tended to have the lowest rates of sleep deprivation in the nation and at least one top score in our other four categories. They are smaller in terms of population, which could be why they are less crowded, quieter, and less affected by light and noise pollution than other cities on our list.

Here are the 10 Best Cities for Sleep:

Don’t see your city? check out our full list below.

The 10 Worst Cities for Sleep

Cities on this list ranked lower for a range of reasons, but many had among the highest rates of sleep deprivation and a low score in at least one other categories. Many had higher rates of obesity, higher unemployment rates, or had more noise or light pollution than their counterparts.

Here are the Top 10 Worst Cities for Sleep:

Don’t see your city? check out our full list below.

Key Findings

Scientists agree that most sleep disorders are actually triggered by underlying physical and emotional conditions. In order to assess the best and worst cities for sleep holistically, we broke down the most common conditions that can trigger sleeplessness and looked closely at key factors within each of them to get a better sense of how American are sleeping.

We also recognize that those experiencing sleeplessness may experience a range of challenges, and we wanted to include them all in our ranking. According to the AASM, there are four primary symptoms people experience when they’re not getting enough sleep:

• A hard time initiating sleep
• Difficulty maintaining sleep, and waking up frequently during the night
• Waking up too early and unable to go back to sleep
• Non-restorative or poor quality sleep

Sleep Deprivation

While we used sleep deprivation as our primary metric because we believe it’s the single best measure of sleep, we also polled Americans asking them about their experiences falling and staying asleep to gain a fuller understanding of the additional symptoms of insomnia.

Cities with the Lowest Rates of Sleep Deprivation

Environmental Factors

Environmental factors are external conditions that make sleep more difficult or that disrupt our natural circadian rhythms and sleep wake cycle, like noise and exposure to natural light instead of artificial light. Studies show that external stimuli during sleep can hinder our ability to fall asleep and also rouse us during light sleep cycles, and while scientists are still trying to determine the full effect of artificial and blue light on our sleep cycles, we do know that exposure to light is one of the most important factors in our ability to sleep.

We studied the Light Pollution Map and the National Transportation Noise Map to assess levels of noise and light pollution in the cities on our list. We hand pulled this data, taking a measurement from the metropolitan center of each city.

Our sleep environment is also disrupted by other people, so we included population density and crime rate in our assessment of environmental factors.

Cities With the Best Sleep Environment

Overall Physical Health

Chronic pain, heart disease, and obesity can all contribute to insomnia and related sleep disorders like sleep apnea. Similarly, regular exercise improves sleep by regulating our circadian rhythms and reducing the risk of health problems and illness. To assess physical health, we pulled rates of obesity and cardiovascular disease across cities and compared them against ‘positive’ health indicators like access to health care and the rate of exercise.

Cities With the Best Physical Health

Well Being

Emotional stress, anxiety, and depression are big contributors to lost sleep, and those who suffer from poor mental health experience insomnia at as much as 4 times more than those who don’t. Depression, anxiety, and sleep have a complex relationship, with poor mental health often causing sleep disruptions, and sleeplessness leading to increased feelings of depression and anxiety.

The data we collected in our Sleep Hygiene poll supports this. Many of the people we polled struggled with falling and staying asleep, and cited anxiety around finances and home or family problems as the primary reasons.

To get a better idea of the overall well being of the cities on our list, we looked at stress factors like divorce rate, unemployment rate, and commute times, and added in the CDC’s data on the number of mentally unhealthy days among adults. We then compared these rates to mental health care access by looking at the employment rates and available jobs of therapists and counselors in that state.

Cities with the Lowest Mental and Emotional Stress

Sleep Hygiene

Poor sleep habits have a direct effect on sleeplessness and can be a major contributor to symptoms of insomnia. Not maintaining healthy sleep hygiene can decrease sleep duration by causing us to fall asleep later and wake up more frequently throughout the night.

Our Sleep Hygiene poll asked 2,500 people across the U.S. to answer questions about sleep hygiene. We asked about pre-bedtime activities, in-bed technology use, work habits, and sleep disruptions. The results showed us that our increasing use of technology at night and irregular sleep habits do have a correlation with nighttime sleep disruption.

While half of respondents keep a regular bedtime routine, over 30% use their devices to stream content or look at social media in bed before attempting to fall asleep, and 63% of respondents conduct work on a device at night, with 12% of people working primarily during nighttime hours.

Sleep Hygiene Poll: Sleep Disruptions

States with the Best Sleep Hygiene

Our Methodology

We compared the following data points across 266 cities and in 5 categories: Sleep Duration, Environmental Factors, Physical Health, Overall Well Being, and Sleep Hygiene. We used 19 factors to compare metrics at the city and state level. Final scores were calculated using a 100-point scale, with 100 points being the highest number of points possible. Data metrics with an (*) indicate that state-level metrics were used.

We compared cities with populations of 100,000 or more according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and chose to omit cities under 100,000 from consideration.

The Best and Worst Cities for Sleep

Wondering how your city stacks up? Here is the full ranking for the best and worst cities for sleep.