Poor sleep can mean not getting enough sleep consistently. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines recommend adults ages 18 to 60 get seven hours or more of sleep per night.

Decline in sleep quality can lead to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or any number of physical and mental health ailments. Sleeping on a comfortable mattress and following a healthy bedtime routine helps, but your sleep quality can depend on where you live.

In densely packed cities and suburbs, you may be more likely to hear machinery and transportation vehicles make loud noises at night. When persistent unwanted sounds, also called noise pollution, disturb your sleep cycle, it can impact your body's ability to repair itself while you doze.

Areas with heavy traffic, manufacturing, or energy or waste facilities can also lead to poor sleep via high air pollution concentrations. Whether indoors or outside, air pollution can lead to disordered breathing, which can cause snoring, and wheezing. This may contribute to shorter sleep duration.

As you can imagine, the same areas with high amounts of noise and air pollution also have high amounts of light pollution. Nighttime artificial light interferes with the body's circadian rhythm, or your body's biological clock that tells you when to wake and when to sleep, potentially causing insomnia and other chronic illnesses. Unfortunately, any type of pollution near your home could affect how well you sleep.

One factor you can control for better sleep? Physical activity. Regular exercise has been shown to help those with chronic sleep issues or disturbed sleep. But even the likelihood of engaging in physical activity is relative to your location: According to a 2020 CDC survey, southern states had the highest prevalence of physical inactivity followed closely by the midwest.

Because there's such a range of factors that contribute to poor sleep health, we conducted a new study to discover the best - and worst - cities for sleep.

Factors We Considered:

We gathered our data from the best available public data sources for this ranking. Since New York City is made up of five separate counties, data from each of these counties were averaged into a single mean score for the city. Nashville and Honolulu were not included due to missing geographic data.

Austin, Texas ranks in the top 10 for nearly every factor in our study, with the least number of residents reporting short sleep duration. Air quality is the only factor for which Austin doesn't rank in the top 10, but it is not far behind, coming in at 11.

Master Your Sleep Health No Matter Where You Live

Though it may seem alarming to live in a city that ranks among the worst for sleep, there are still ways to combat the negative effects of pollution for optimal snoozing.

The Top U.S. Cities for Sleep Health

For this study, U.S. News & World Report considered data for the top 50 cities in the U.S. then scored each city in a handful of factors to determine overall ratings. Five key factors - air quality, noise pollution, light pollution, physical activity, and sleep duration - were considered to measure each city's sleep quality. The U.S. News research team studied the most influential factors on sleep and determined these weightings based on data quality and their direct impact on sleep. All factors were assigned a weighted percentage to reach a total of 100%.Data for each of the factors were gathered from the best possible public data sources. For county-based data, the county where the city is located was used. In the case of New York City, which has five counties, the data for all five were averaged to obtain a single mean score. Data for Nashville and Honolulu were not included due to missing geographic data.

To obtain the final score, the weighted scores for each factor for each city are summed. The final ranking orders cities from 1 as the best for sleep to 48 as the worst for sleep.

The breakdown of factors, their weights, and their data sources are listed below:

Noise Pollution - Total Weight of 20%

Data source: Esri, Department of Transportation (DOT) aviation model and road noise model, adjusted for land areas within each city, measured in dBA (adjusted decibel measurements)

Light Pollution - Total Weight of 15%

Data source: Esri, Earth Observation Group Mean light pollution, adjusted for land areas within each city, measured in nW/cm²/sr

Air Pollution - Total Weight of 5%

Data source: IQAir Air Quality Index, by city

Physical Activity - Total Weight of 15%

Data source: CDC.gov inactivity prevalence among adults

Prevalence of Short Sleep Duration - Total Weight of 45%

Data source: CDC.gov sleep data and statistics