Does Sleeping With Your Dog Help You Sleep Better?

You make room, your dog curls up beside you, and the day finally feels over. It’s easy to understand why you enjoy having them there. What’s harder to know is whether you’re actually sleeping better.

Once the lights are out, does that familiar presence help you rest—or bring little interruptions you barely notice? And what does the arrangement mean for your dog’s sleep?

Scientists have been investigating both sides of this bedtime routine.

In a 2017 Mayo Clinic study, researchers monitored 40 adults and their dogs for seven nights. People generally maintained reasonably good sleep efficiency, meaning the proportion of time in bed spent asleep. But those whose dogs shared the mattress slept less efficiently than those whose dogs stayed elsewhere in the bedroom. Having a dog nearby and having one pressed against your legs were different arrangements.

That distinction can disappear in headlines about “sleeping with pets.” Some studies mean sharing a bed; others include sleeping in the same room. Those findings cannot always answer exactly the same question.

Part of the difficulty is that researchers measure sleep in different ways. Some ask people how they slept; others use sensors to track their nighttime activity. Those measurements don’t always tell the same story.

In a small 2020 study, women and their dogs wore movement trackers while sharing a bed. When dogs moved, their owners were more likely to move too. Yet the women rarely reported that their dogs had disturbed their sleep. This suggests that some nighttime activity goes unnoticed, although movement alone does not prove someone woke up.

A larger 2024 survey asked nearly 1,600 American adults about their sleep. People who slept in the same room as their pets reported poorer sleep quality and more severe insomnia symptoms. The researchers also found these associations when looking specifically at people sleeping with dogs.

That finding shows a connection, not necessarily a cause. For example, people who already sleep poorly might seek their pets’ company at night. The study also grouped together people whose pets shared their bed and those whose pets simply shared the room.

An October 2026 study added a different result. Researchers monitored 25 owners and their dogs for roughly four weeks and found no significant difference in sleep duration or efficiency associated with sharing a bed.

They also noticed that, among pairs whose nighttime activity was linked, the human’s movement more often came first. Dogs may sometimes be responding to us. But this was a small study involving only huskies and malamutes, so its findings may not apply to every household.

Our presence may also make a difference to how well our dogs sleep.

In a small 2025 experiment involving nine dogs, researchers recorded brain activity and other physiological signals during afternoon sleep sessions in an unfamiliar laboratory. Each dog rested once with their owner present and once with a friendly unfamiliar person while the owner waited outside.

The dogs slept better when their owners were present. They fell asleep sooner, spent less of the session awake, and spent more time in non-REM sleep. These were measurable differences in their sleep recordings.

The findings suggest that having their person nearby can help dogs rest in an unfamiliar setting. Whether sharing a mattress offers any additional benefit at home remains an open question: the experiment did not compare sleeping in an owner’s bed with sleeping in a separate dog bed.

For people, the research gives a mixed picture. Some studies have linked bed-sharing with poorer sleep, while others have found no significant difference. The distinction between sharing a bedroom and sharing a mattress is worth keeping in mind when deciding what works in your home.

Consider both how comfortable you feel at bedtime and how rested you feel the next morning. If your dog’s movements regularly wake you, trying a dog bed beside yours is a reasonable way to explore whether a little more space helps. It allows you to remain nearby while changing the part of the arrangement that may be disruptive.

The research gives us reasons to value that closeness—and to pay attention to how well we actually rest together.