How are sleep quality and sleep efficiency defined in the program?

In this article, you will learn what is meant by sleep quality and sleep efficiency, how the two values differ, and why they are important in somnio sleep training.

In somnio sleep training, you are regularly asked about your sleep quality in the morning log of your sleep journal. In addition, the program calculates your sleep efficiency based on your entries. Both values are important for evaluating your sleep, but they describe different aspects.

Sleep quality – your personal experience
Sleep quality describes how restorative you felt your sleep was. It is a subjective assessment and depends on how rested, clear, and energized you feel the next day, regardless of how long you slept.

When assessing your sleep quality, this includes questions such as:

• Did you feel that you slept through the night or that you tossed and turned a lot?
• Did your sleep feel deep and restorative or rather light and restless?

Sleep quality is affected by many factors, such as stress, habits, your sleep environment, or your lifestyle. That is why it can vary from night to night. The important point is this: sleep duration and sleep quality are not automatically linked. You may well feel rested after a short night, or still feel tired after many hours of sleep.

Sleep efficiency – your objectively calculated proportion of sleep
Sleep efficiency is an objectively calculated value. It indicates how much time you actually spent sleeping while in bed. It is given as a percentage.

It is calculated from the ratio of:

• time in bed and
• time you were actually asleep

An example: You spend a total of 10 hours in bed, of which you sleep 6 hours and are awake for 4 hours. Your sleep efficiency is 60 %.

The faster you fall asleep and the better you sleep through the night, the higher your sleep efficiency. A sleep efficiency value of over 85 % is generally considered good. In older people, slightly lower values can still be within the normal range.

In the program, sleep efficiency is one of the most important evaluations. It is shown to you in the chart of your morning log as a number in the orange circle for the respective day. The goal of the training is to improve sleep efficiency over time.

Low sleep efficiency can indicate that you spend a lot of time awake in bed, wake up frequently, or need a long time to fall asleep. Lying awake for a long time can negatively affect sleep, because the bed then becomes increasingly associated with being awake, rumination, or contraction. That is why good sleep efficiency is a central goal in sleep training: the bed should once again be clearly associated with sleep and recovery.

How are sleep quality and sleep efficiency related?
In many cases, sleep quality and sleep efficiency positively affect each other: someone who falls asleep quickly and sleeps through the night well often also experiences sleep as restorative. However, that is not necessarily the case.

Since sleep quality is subjective and sleep efficiency is calculated, it can happen that:

• your sleep efficiency is high, but you still do not feel rested, or
• you experience your sleep as good even though your sleep efficiency is rather low.

That is precisely why the two values together provide a meaningful picture of your sleep.

Important:
If you feel persistently tired or exhausted over a longer period despite good sleep efficiency, it may make sense to discuss this with your doctor or another specialist. Sometimes factors play a role that cannot be captured through the sleep journal alone.

Any questions?
If you have questions about the somnio app – both regarding content and technical issues – you can contact our support team at any time. You can reach us by email at support@somn.io or directly via the support feature in the app.