Sleep Stages – Oura Help

Every night, your brain and body experience different phases of sleep, each essential for supporting your mental and physical health. With the Oura App, you can track the quantity and quality of your sleep, note your high points, and identify areas for improvement.

What Are Sleep Stages?
How Sleep Stages Are Measured
Oura's Sleep Staging Algorithm
More Information

What Are Sleep Stages?

In the Sleep detail view, you'll find color-coded sleep stage data at the top of the screen. Your sleep stage hypnogram is also available under the Details section.

The Oura Ring measures four separate stages of sleep:

Awake: the time you spent in bed before and after falling asleep. This also includes brief awakenings that occur during sleep
REM: rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep is associated with dreaming, memory consolidation, and creativity. REM sleep is regulated by circadian rhythms and makes up anywhere from 5-50% of your total sleep time. Typically, you get more REM sleep during the latter half of the night
Light: light sleep guides you into deeper stages, and acts as the beginning of or transition between each sleep cycle. Light sleep makes up about 50% of total sleep time
Deep: also known as slow-wave sleep, deep sleep is when your body repairs and restores itself. During deep sleep, your muscles grow and repair, immune system is refreshed, and brain flushes out toxins. Deep sleep makes up anywhere from 0–35% of your total sleep. Usually, you get more deep sleep during the early night.

Every individual's sleep requirements are different, though the recommended amount is 7-9 hours for most adults. This is enough time for your body to go through four to five 90-minute sleep cycles. In general, you spend most of the night in light sleep.

Here are some general tips:

Try to optimize for less awake time and more restorative deep or REM sleep. If you're getting more REM sleep than usual, this may be a sign you’re recovering from prolonged sleep deprivation. Check out our blog for tips on getting more REM sleep.
If you're getting more deep sleep than normal, it could be due to a recent hard workout or changes to improve your sleep quality. See this blog article for more ways to increase deep sleep.
Remember, light sleep isn't "wasted sleep." Half of your total sleep time is usually made up of light sleep, which is a natural and healthy part of the sleep cycle. Learn more about light sleep and its benefits on the Pulse Blog.

How Sleep Stages Are Measured

Oura uses data from many of your biosignals — including movement, skin temperature, resting heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), and respiratory rate — to determine which sleep stage your body is in. Here are some of the indicators that Oura looks for at each stage:

Light sleep:

Respiratory rate slows
Heart rate decreases
Average body temperature drops

Deep sleep:

Low movement
Heart rate and respiration stabilize
Skin temperature is at its highest

REM sleep:

Respiratory rate increases
Heart rate increases

Learn more about how Oura measures sleep in this video:

Oura's Sleep Staging Algorithm

Oura's sleep staging algorithm achieved 79% agreement with polysomnography (PSG) sleep lab tests.

Find more information about these validation studies and the accuracy of our sleep algorithms on our blog: Oura’s New Sleep Staging Algorithm: More Accurate Than Ever Before.

You can export your sleep stage data from the Oura App to Apple Health through our Apple Health integration.