Best and worst cities for sleeping in Europe

The best cities across Europe to get a good night’s sleep have been revealed, with Berlin ranking in first position. Sleep experts at Online-Bedrooms have analysed data to create the European Sleep Index revealing the best capital city for a good night’s sleep.

They looked at cities across Europe including France, Croatia, Hungary, Italy and the UK. The cities were ranked based on several factors including light pollution, daylight disturbance based on cloud levels, noise pollution and optimum sleep levels for the population.

Berlin has been named the best city in Europe for sleeping, with little light or noise pollution and 70% of the population spending the right amount of time in bed. The city in second place is Prague, with over 72% cloudy days to help residents get a good sleeping pattern despite 41% being disturbed by road noise overnight.

Rome has been named the worst city in Europe for sleeping due to its high levels of light pollution (9.86 luminance per square metre) and the second most noise polluted city in the continent. 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. Nic Shacklock from Online-Bedrooms said “It’s extremely important to get a good night’s sleep, but the European Sleep Index has shown us that sometimes that is impossible for residents and tourists to do.

“The city you live in and visit on holiday can have a massive impact on your sleeping patterns and our research has shown that across Europe light pollution, sunlight disturbance, noise pollution and low levels of optimum sleep are all causing a bad night’s sleep.

“Overall, Berlin is 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.

“Rome has ranked the worst city for sleeping in the continent as the light pollution levels, noise disturbance and the number of residents getting optimum sleep are all low.”