Most adults should spend about 20–25% of their nightly sleep in REM, which usually comes out to around 90–120 minutes if you sleep 7–9 hours.

Quick Scoop

  • Aim for 7–9 hours of total sleep as an adult.
  • Of that, about 1.5–2 hours should be REM sleep (roughly 20–25%).
  • REM usually starts about 90 minutes after you fall asleep and gets longer toward morning.
  • Teens also land around 20–25% of sleep in REM, but they generally need 8–10 total hours.
  • The exact amount varies with age, health, medications, and how consistently you sleep.

If your tracker says your REM is a bit under 20% but you wake up feeling refreshed, functioning well, and your mood is steady, it may still be normal for you.

How to roughly “hit” healthy REM

  1. Keep a regular sleep schedule (same bedtime and wake time, even on weekends).
  1. Get enough total sleep; cutting the night short usually cuts off the long REM-rich cycles at the end.
  1. Limit alcohol and heavy late-evening meals, which can reduce or fragment REM.
  1. Manage light: bright light in the morning, dimmer lights and screens in the hour before bed.
  1. Talk to a doctor if you have insomnia, loud snoring with gasping, or very vivid disturbing dreams that affect your daytime functioning.

A quick example

If you sleep 8 hours:

  • 20% REM ≈ 1.6 hours (about 1 hour 35 minutes).
  • 25% REM ≈ 2 hours.

So an 8‑hour night with 1.5–2 hours of REM is right in the range most sleep experts consider typical for healthy adults.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.