How to Wake Someone Up in the Best Way?

When someone sleeps a lot, it can be challenging to wake them up. Especially if you don’t have a valid excuse for waking them up (such as the fact that they have to be at work), you might want to start with an indirect approach. Alternatively, if you’re very bold and don’t mind getting them a little upset, you could try more direct methods or even play a little bit of a practical joke on your friends. On the other hand, if someone is sleepwalking, it is generally best to help them get back to bed without waking them up.

Jump to the best way to wake someone up:

How to Wake Someone Up?

While it may be alluring to gently wake someone who is sound asleep by splashing them with cold water, most people would probably prefer to be awakened in a more gentle way.

Here are eight methods that could safely wake a sleeper.

Music

No other sounds or alarms can compare to music for the way it awakens our brain. According to a 2020 study that contrasted the sound of an alarm clock with music, people preferred to be awakened by music. They also discovered that music helped reduce the sensation of “sleep inertia.” Right after waking up, people who have sleep inertia experience low moods, low energy, and poor cognitive abilities. In layman’s terms, we call this “feeling groggy.” Your energy levels can be greatly improved by selecting the right music to listen to first thing in the morning. It increases dopamine levels, which is one of the “happy” hormones directly connected to pleasure.

Wake-up Lights

You can purchase smart light bulbs that will gradually get brighter and brighter in accordance with the time you set, just like you can program an alarm clock to go off at a specific time.

A person can be gently awakened by turning on the lights in their bedroom gradually. Compared to abruptly turning on the lights and flooding the space with bright light, it is much less startling.

Natural Light

You can always rely on natural light to get going in the morning if you don’t want to use technology. The first sunbeams can be brought in by using translucent curtains or slightly opening the blinds.

According to research, melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleep, is suppressed by morning light. Serotonin levels are also raised by natural light, which contributes to your feeling awake and alert.

Let the Sunshine in

Your body has learned to associate light with daytime and daytime with being awake. Even cultures with very little else in common sleep at night and are active during the day. It’s what everyone does by nature. The results of research support this. Melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleep, is suppressed by morning light. Your serotonin levels are also raised by the same natural light, which aids in making you feel awake and alert. The first rays of morning sunshine can be welcomed in by gradually opening the curtains or opening the blinds a crack. The sun is telling your deep sleeper “It’s time to rise and shine, good morning!”

Phone

When sleeping, a lot of people keep their phones close to their bed. Using it as an alarm makes sense for a few reasons:

• If you find a sound or song that wakes you up, you can program it to play repeatedly once you’ve found it to be effective.
• You are accustomed to answering your phone when it rings or notifies you of something. So you might be more attentive when it tells you to wake up.
• Although the general rule is to avoid pressing the snooze button in the morning, it can be easily tricked into letting you snooze for an additional few minutes.

You might want to put your phone and other technology away at night if you have insomnia.

Try sending a text to the person you’re trying to wake up. People who are wired to respond to a text, even when sleepy, may appreciate a “Good morning!” text from a loved one.

Read about How To Wake Someone Up Over The Phone

Mental Stimulation

Consider setting your alarm to wake up to NPR or another news station for people who like mental stimulation, even in the early morning. This might aid in catching their attention and rousing them from sleep.

Some alarm apps demand that you complete a puzzle or a math problem before you can silence the alarm.

Even a wake-up challenge app called Alarmy exists so you can demonstrate that you’re getting out of bed. Until you finish the challenge, the alarm won’t stop sounding.

The Right Scent

A deep sleeper might be sufficiently awakened by the aroma of coffee, bacon, or another alluring food coming from the kitchen. Open their bedroom door and let the alluring aroma of breakfast do the convincing.

Aromatherapy

It’s well known that some smells have an energizing effect. For the morning, experts advise using pine needle, grapefruit, and rosemary oils. Additionally, your memory and sense of smell are closely related. Your deep sleeper will eventually come to associate that particular scent with waking up if you diffuse the same scent every day. Once the familiar scent of the day starts to permeate the air, it will naturally get easier and easier to rouse them from their sleep.

The Smell of Breakfast

The smell of breakfast is the best way to wake someone up from a deep sleep. In many cases, the aroma of coffee, bacon, cinnamon rolls, or another favorite morning treat coming from the kitchen is enough to motivate someone to get out of bed. A person’s brain is still active while they are asleep, so keep that in mind. They’ll wake up when they smell their breakfast cooking and wonder what it is that smells so good. Open their bedroom door, then let the alluring aroma of breakfast do the work for you!

Use a Gentle Nudge

Teenagers frequently sleep later than you ever imagined they could, as almost any parent of one knows. You might even feel like your teen’s personal wake-up call service. It’s not impossible to learn how to gently wake up someone who just won’t get up on time. If all else fails, nudge them gently to wake up. Tell them it’s time to wake up for the day while you do this in a soothing voice. Make sure they are awake before you leave the room so you don’t leave and let them fall back asleep.

Distant Alarm

Even though the trick is old, it still works. You can make someone get up to silence an alarm by placing it on the opposite side of the room, whether it’s a clock or a phone.

To make sure that this tactic is successful, there are two essential components. To be heard, the alarm must first be close by and loud enough. It’s also crucial that the person you’re attempting to awaken doesn’t immediately return to bed after rising.

Stick to a Schedule

Establishing a regular sleep schedule for every day of the week is one of the best ways to reliably wake up on time.

According to a study, excessive sleep inconsistency and other unhealthy lifestyle choices can be brought on by a person’s bedtime and wake-up schedule being too variable.

Your body’s internal clock can learn new patterns by adhering to a regular sleep-wake schedule. It might become simpler to go to sleep and get up at the same time every day with practice.

Read about Why Doesn’t Coffee Wake Me Up?

What to Do If They Still Won’t Wake Up?

Not everyone will respond to all (or any) of these strategies; it will depend on the sleeper and the day. Very heavy sleepers or people with sleep disorders may regrettably need more drastic interventions, especially if their waking up is time-sensitive. Teenagers in particular can be notoriously difficult to wake up, in large part due to biological changes (most notably, DLMO skews later in teens, meaning their bodies are inclined to go to sleep — and therefore wake up — on a later schedule).

Here are a couple techniques to try if gentler methods fail:

1. Going the distance: Try positioning a speaker in the room where they can’t access it from bed and turning on a loud enough alarm clock (or music player, if necessary) to make it difficult for them to ignore it. They will be forced to get out of bed in order to turn it off, decreasing their propensity to press the snooze button. (Place it on the windowsill for an added wake-up effect so they can also get some sunlight!)
2. Cozy no more: We wrap ourselves in blankets and quilts while we sleep and frequently curl up because our core body temperature tends to decrease before and during sleep. As a result, making someone’s bed less comfortable can be a good way to get them out of bed. Removing covers and opening a window to let some chilly air in may seem like a sadistic tack to take, especially if it’s someone you care for, but dialing down the snuggly factor could be just the encouragement your loved one needs to get moving. Cold water to the face, on the other hand — the classic cinematic “rude awakening” moment — might be taking it too far.

However, keep in mind that it will be more difficult to wake someone up if you wake them up before their body is ready, such as if they are sleep deprived from a busy week or have been tossing and turning for hours at a time. If someone has the luxury of sleeping in, don’t only wake them because you believe they “should” be up at a certain time. Everybody is different when it comes to sleeping. In the subsequent section, we’ll go over these variations in greater detail.

Time to Wake Someone Up

Of course, there are some mornings when we have little choice but to wake someone up early because they (or we) have somewhere to be. But whenever possible, it’s beneficial to take a look at their larger sleep context by asking yourself the following questions:

Have They Met Their Sleep Need?

Simply put, a person’s sleep needs are how much sleep they require each night in order to perform at their peak level of mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Despite widespread belief that we should all aim for eight hours of sleep each night, each person’s need for sleep is highly individual and genetically influenced. According to one study, the recommended amount of sleep is closer to 8 hours and 40 minutes (plus or minus about 10 minutes), and a startlingly high proportion of people (exactly 13.5%) say they need 9 hours or more! Therefore, just because you are well-rested and operating at your best capacity after 7.5 hours of sleep, it does not follow that the person you are waking up is able to function at a similar level.

Sleep debt, which is a running count of how many hours of sleep we’ve shorted ourselves compared to our need over a specific period of time (in the RISE app, we use a 14-day window), also has a significant impact on how much sleep our bodies are requesting on any given night, further complicating matters. The need for sleep may temporarily increase if a person has a history of short sleep because their bodies and brains are constantly looking for ways to make up for lost sleep (even 30 minutes of sleep a night adds up over time). And it’s crucial that we let them catch up on this sleep debt, if schedules allow, because having a high sleep debt doesn’t just make you feel groggy or lethargic. It affects every aspect of our lives, including cognition, mood, work performance, and the capacity of our immune systems to fend off any bugs that may be going around.

How can we determine how much sleep someone needs each night or whether they are carrying a sizable sleep debt? RISE can help you by enabling you to sync accounts with your loved ones so that you can view each other’s sleep and energy data. You won’t have to rely on speculation to determine how much sleep they typically require each night, when they went to sleep the night before, or how far into their sleep debt they actually are.

RISE can give you access to your partner’s sleep information so you can predict their mood and mental state and even give you advice on how to get them out of a sleep debt rut.

Their Chronotype

Our ideal sleep-wake schedules vary greatly from person to person. And it’s not just a matter of preference either; just like our need for sleep, our chronotype—or, more specifically, when we naturally tend to go to sleep and wake up when left to our own devices—is a genetic trait that is particular to each of us. Some of us are naturally morning people, while others feel their happiest and healthiest when they regularly stay up late. In chronotype-speak, these are “early birds” and “night owls,” respectively, though chronotype isn’t actually a dichotomy — people exist all across the sleep-wake spectrum. (For the record, our chronotype also dictates when we experience energy peaks and lows while awake.)

Therefore, it’s wise to take their chronotype into account before abruptly waking a late sleeper. When someone was awake until the wee hours of the morning riding their own late-night productivity wave, they were simply meeting their need for sleep. Snoozing until 10am might be mistakenly perceived as indulgent or lazy by a morning person who has already made two crucial phone calls by the time the sun comes up.

Would Someone Get Mad at Me for Waking Them Up?

If they do, you should try to avoid getting offended. Right after waking up, people aren’t always their best selves. Sleep inertia can result in short-term emotional dysregulation in addition to drowsiness and confusion. Whatever you want to call it—craziness, grumpiness, whatever—it’s fortunately a temporary mood. The person’s bad mood is not related to you, and it will pass quickly if you’ve done everything you can to wake them thoughtfully (assuming their sleep debt is low).

It’s important to reiterate that having a lot of unmet sleep needs lengthens and exacerbates sleep inertia. This is another argument in favor of letting people get the sleep they need. Gentler techniques are also preferred for this reason because abrupt wake-ups can be particularly disorienting and worsen sleep inertia.

In terms of sleep inertia, nappers aren’t all that different. Generally speaking, the worse the sleep inertia is the longer the nap is, so rousers beware! However, sleep inertia is typically nonexistent for naps under 20 minutes.

Wake Up on the “Right” Side of the Bed With RISE

Our morning, as well as the rest of the day and beyond, are affected by how and when we wake up. Try using gentle wake-up techniques that are timed with their larger sleep and energy picture in mind if you want to give your sleeper the best chance for long-term success.

The Partner Connect feature of RISE can provide you with the knowledge you need to make the best decision regarding their wake-up call if it’s someone for whom you frequently have wake-up duty.

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