European Sleep Index: The best cities for sleeping in Europe

The best cities across Europe to get a good night’s sleep have been revealed with Berlin coming out on top. 

Here at Online-Bedrooms we want everyone to recognise the importance of quality sleep so we’ve created the European Sleep Index to reveal which capital city is the best for sleeping.

We have investigated the impact of urban spaces on our sleep to reveal which factors contribute to the quality of our sleep  based on the city we’re living in or visiting on holiday. 

Location can have a massive impact on your sleeping patterns and our research has shown that across Europe light pollution, sunlight disturbance based on the number of cloudy days, noise pollution and low levels of optimum sleep are all causing a bad night’s sleep. 

Our findings have revealed Berlin as the best city in Europe for sleeping with low levels of noise pollution from cars during the night and over 80% of cloudy days to stop sunlight disturbing sleep. 

The European Sleep Index has also ranked Rome as the worst city for sleeping as the light pollution levels and noise disturbance levels are high, with only 68% of residents getting optimum sleep.

Comparing the best and the worst cities meant that Berlin had a total of 40 points yet Rome came away with just 13 points.

The city ranked the second best for sleeping in Europe is Prague, with over 72% cloudy days to help residents get a good sleeping pattern despite 41% being disturbed by road noise overnight. 

London is the worst capital for light pollution disturbing sleep, yet it ranks the third overall due to low noise levels and over 74% of the population getting optimum sleep. 

Just 61% of Dublin’s residents are getting the optimum sleep, leaving the city to rank in seventh position overall.

Madrid has the lowest average of cloudy days meaning sunlight is disturbing residents' sleep, causing the Spanish capital to rank in 10th position on the index. 

Just three cities have less than 20% of their population disturbed at night by road noise - London, Berlin and Zagreb. 

Despite this, the Croatian capital has high levels of light pollution (7.44 luminance per square metre), lots of sunlight disturbing sleeping patterns with just 58% of cloudy days on average - meaning only 68% of residents are getting optimum sleep. 

Bucharest was the second worst capital city for a good night’s sleep due to high rates of sunlight and light pollution as well as 33% of the population being affected by noise throughout the night. 

The city with the worst levels of noise pollution from road traffic was Paris with 54% of residents having a bad sleep due to the disturbance. This means that the French capital is the ninth best city in Europe for sleeping. 

Prague is the city with the least amount of light pollution, closely followed by Budapest which has 5.76 luminance per square metre. 

Budapest also had over 70% of residents getting optimum sleeping levels, meaning the Hungarian capital ranks as the fourth best city for a good night’s sleep across Europe. 

Warsaw has a similar number of residents sleeping well (69%), and also has only 28% of the population affected by noise pollution during the night. 

The sixth best city for sleeping in Europe is Oslo due to over 70% of cloudy days to allow residents to rest well despite 38% of the population experiencing noise pollution. 

Sources correct as of February 2024.

• Light pollution levels (measured in mcd/m2) - https://www.lightpollutionmap.info
• Daylight levels (measured by the average of cloudy days over a period of 10 years) - https://www.worldweatheronline.com/ 
• Noise pollution (measured by the percentage of population affected) - https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/human/noise/noise-fact-sheets/noise-country-fact-sheets-2021 
• Sleep hours (measured by the percentage of population getting optimum sleep) - https://plushcare.com/blog/world-sleep-trends/ 

The light pollution levels, daylight levels, noise pollution levels and, percentage of the population getting optimum sleeping hours have all been analysed for this index. 

Each city was given a nominal score which was totalled up to give a final ranking. 

Prague and London both resulted in the same points score, so London was awarded an extra point based on quieter population levels to give an equal ranking. 

Noise pollution levels for Budapest were not available so the average was taken from all Hungarian city data that was available.