Baby Sleep Needs & Bedtime Calculator

Sleep needs fall steadily as children grow. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine consensus statement recommends 12–16 hours per 24 hours (naps included) for infants aged 4–12 months, 11–14 hours for ages 1–2 and 10–13 hours for ages 3–5; the WHO guideline range for the first months is 14–17 hours. See the AASM statement and the WHO guideline.

These are ranges for healthy children, and a baby who sits slightly outside them but is thriving and alert is usually fine. Premature babies should be counted by corrected age.

Enter your baby’s age (or date of birth), the time they usually wake in the morning and roughly how many hours they nap during the day. The calculator subtracts nap time from the 24-hour range to get the night sleep needed, then counts back from the wake-up time to give a bedtime window.

For example, with a 6-month-old who wakes at 07:00 and naps 3 hours, the 12–16 hour range leaves 9–13 hours of night sleep, which suggests a window between 18:00 and 22:00. Use the earlier or later end depending on how your baby copes the next day.

Very young babies do not have a fixed bedtime, so under about 3 months treat the result as a rough picture of total sleep rather than a schedule. For awake-time targets between sleeps, try the wake window calculator.