What is the definition of sleep quality and sleep efficiency?

    Sleep quality. Sleep quality has an impact of your subjective feeling of being well rested and full of energy on the next day.The better your sleep quality the less tired you feel throughout the day. At the same time, the quality of sleep varies from person to person, depending on their lifestyles, habits and other factors. Healthy sleeps also means increased mental and physical health and better life quality. 

    When you wake up in the morning it is probably easy for you to assess your sleep quality and how rested you feel. Do you feel like you could sleep deeply and profoundly or was your sleep only superficial looking back Based on these considerations you can assess your sleep quality. 

    Be aware that sleep quality and quantity are not the same. this means that your sleep quality can be very high even though you had a short night and you feel well rested the next day. And sometimes you may sleep for many hours and still don't feel well rested, because your sleep quality was rather low. 

    Sleep efficiency. Sleep efficiency creates a link between sleep lenght and time spent in bed. As a result sleep efficiency is higher the faster you fall asleep and the longer you sleep without interruptions. This represents the percentage of your time spent in bed asleep. 

    Considering you spent ten hours in bed. Of these ten hours you were awake for four hours and asleep for six hours. Which amounts to a sleep efficiency of 60%.

    People who fall asleep faster may have a much higher sleep efficiency. The ideal sleep efficiency stands at 85% percent or higher. We calculate this percentage by using the data you entered into the sleep journal. 

    A good sleep efficiency is important because spending a lot of time awake in bed may exacerbate your sleep disorder and it will become harder to control it. Unconscious learning processes may lead to a situation where the mind creates a connection between being awake in bed and having ruminating thoughts or feeling pressure. A lot of time people are lying awake at night or wake up too early but can't make themselves leave their bed. Which results in a low sleep efficiency, they don't spend enough time sleeping in bed. Since these symptoms strongly point towards sleeping disorder, a high sleep efficiency is and important benchmark for healthy sleep. 

    The goal is consequently to spend as little time as possible in bed. To achieve this goal, the mind needs to increasingly associate the bed with sleep and relaxation. This is why we really highlight sleep efficiency. With a high sleep efficiency it is easier to gradually reduce bed time and being asleep for the majority of this time. 

    Sleep quality and sleep efficiency. High quality sleep usually comes with shorter waking times. However sleep quality and sleep efficieny are not necessarily linked.   
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