Does Sleeping With Your Pet Actually Hurt Your Sleep?

Written by the Nuvirox Research Team

Short answer: it genuinely depends on whether your pet is in the room or in the bed — the research draws a real line there. This is one of the more surprising findings in consumer sleep research: having a pet in your bedroom is, on average, not the sleep disruptor most people assume. Having that same pet actually on your bed is a different story, at least on objective measures.

What did the Mayo Clinic study actually find?

Researchers at Mayo Clinic's Center for Sleep Medicine monitored 40 healthy adult dog owners for five months, with one week of simultaneous accelerometer tracking on both the humans (via Actiwatch) and their dogs (via FitBark). People with a dog in the bedroom but not on the bed had an average sleep efficiency of 83%, while people who let their dog sleep on the bed averaged 80% — both technically in the "satisfactory" range, but the on-bed group also reported more nighttime awakenings. The study's lead author, Dr. Lois Krahn, noted that many owners find genuine comfort and security from having a pet nearby overnight, which is part of why the researchers were careful not to frame this as a simple "pets are bad for sleep" story.

Does this hold up in larger, more diverse samples?

Not entirely — and this is the honest counterweight worth including. A larger, nationally representative U.S. survey of 1,591 adults (758 of whom co-slept with pets) found co-sleeping with pets was associated with poorer perceived sleep quality and greater insomnia severity overall, a somewhat less favorable picture than the small Mayo Clinic sample. A separate Australian study of over 10,000 adults found pet co-sleepers took longer to fall asleep and were more likely to report feeling tired on waking and experiencing noise-related disturbances, though it found no difference in total sleep duration or daytime tiredness. Yet another study of nearly 1,000 women found dog and cat co-sleepers didn't differ from non-owners on most sleep quality measures except daytime dysfunction. The honest summary: the research doesn't point in one clean direction, and results vary by study design, sample, and how "co-sleeping" is defined.

Why the studies might disagree. Differences in animal size, number of pets, individual bondedness, and whether the pet is trained to stay still overnight all plausibly affect outcomes, and most studies can't fully control for all of them. It's also possible some of the poorer-sleep associations in survey data reflect that people already struggling with sleep or loneliness are more likely to seek comfort from co-sleeping with a pet in the first place, rather than the pet being the cause.

Practical takeaways

• Room, not bed, tends to have the better evidence if your priority is objective sleep efficiency.
• If your pet is restless or large, the case for keeping them off the bed specifically is stronger, since size and movement are plausible drivers of the on-bed disruption seen in the Mayo data.
• If co-sleeping genuinely helps you feel secure and fall asleep faster, that subjective benefit is real too, and the Mayo researchers themselves didn't recommend banning pets from the bedroom.
• Consider a consistent routine — a dog bed at the foot of your bed or in the room can offer a middle ground between full co-sleeping and full exclusion.

Frequently asked questions

Is it bad to let my dog sleep in the bedroom?

According to the Mayo Clinic actigraphy study, having a dog in the bedroom but not on the bed did not appear to meaningfully disrupt sleep efficiency for most owners in the study, and some owners reported feeling more secure with a pet nearby.

Is it bad to let my dog or cat sleep on the bed with me?

The evidence is mixed. The Mayo Clinic study found slightly lower sleep efficiency and more awakenings with pets on the bed, while a larger national survey found co-sleeping with pets generally was associated with poorer perceived sleep quality. Other studies found no meaningful difference. It likely depends on the individual pet, its size, and how restless it is overnight.

Why do some studies disagree about whether pets hurt sleep?

Differences in sample size, pet type and size, whether the study used objective actigraphy or self-report, and how "co-sleeping" was defined all plausibly contribute to the mixed findings across this body of research.

From Nuvirox

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Whatever your bedroom setup, a wind-down routine you can rely on matters. Sleep+ Restore’s 10 mg melatonin plus L-theanine and chamomile blend is formulated to support your own sleep onset — it doesn't address a restless pet directly, but a consistent bedtime cue can help you fall asleep faster even with some background disruption.

Learn more about Sleep+ Restore →

The bottom line

Pets in the bedroom, but off the bed, held up reasonably well in the most detailed objective sleep-lab study available. Pets on the bed showed a small but real dip in sleep efficiency in that same study, though larger survey research on co-sleeping broadly is more mixed and sometimes less favorable. If you love sleeping with your pet and it genuinely helps you feel secure, that's a legitimate factor too — this isn't a settled, one-size-fits-all answer.

Does the type of pet matter?

Most of the rigorous objective research in this area has focused on dogs, given their size and tendency to move around during the night, which makes them more plausible sleep disruptors than smaller or more still animals. Cats have been studied somewhat less thoroughly with objective measures, though survey research generally groups cat and dog owners together and finds broadly similar patterns. Larger dogs and more restless individual animals are plausibly more disruptive on the bed specifically, though this hasn't been rigorously broken out by breed or size in the available controlled studies.

Can training a pet to stay still improve co-sleeping outcomes?

This hasn't been directly tested in controlled research, but it's a reasonable inference from the existing data: since movement and awakenings, not simply presence, appear to be what differentiates on-bed from in-room sleep outcomes in the Mayo Clinic study, a calmer, more settled pet would plausibly reduce some of the disruption. Establishing a consistent spot for the pet, even on the bed, may help more than allowing free movement throughout the night.

Does having multiple pets in the bedroom compound the effect?

This hasn't been directly isolated in the controlled studies reviewed here, most of which focused on single-pet households, but it's a reasonable inference that more animals in a sleeping space would plausibly mean more overall movement and potential disruption, particularly if the animals themselves interact with each other overnight. Anyone with multiple pets who suspects disrupted sleep may want to experiment with keeping at least one animal outside the bedroom to see if it makes a noticeable difference.

References

1. Patel SI, et al. The Effect of Dogs on Human Sleep in the Home Sleep Environment. Mayo Clin Proc. 2017. doi:10.1016/j.mayocp.2017.06.014.
2. Co-sleeping with pets, stress, and sleep in a nationally-representative sample of United States adults. PMCID: PMC10918166.
3. Co-Sleeping between Adolescents and Their Pets May Not Impact Sleep Quality. PMCID: PMC7838871.

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This article is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice.