The Morning Light Habit Sleep Experts Swear By

What you may not have heard is exactly how to get it: where to position yourself, how early in the morning to start basking, and how long to take in the rays. Without that knowledge, the advice to “get more morning light” is surprisingly hard to put into practice.

Here’s what researchers say about how to get the right dose of morning light. 

The amount of light reaching your eyes is measured in lux, and by that measure, most morning routines happen in near-darkness. A dimly lit bedroom might clock in at 30 to 40 lux. A brightly lit kitchen might reach 500. Step outside on an overcast morning, and you’re standing in 5,000 to 10,000. “You’re looking at orders of magnitude more light when you’re outside,” says Jamie Zeitzer, a circadian physiologist and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University.

Sitting directly beside a window and looking out might expose you to around 1,000 lux. That’s a fraction of what’s available outdoors, but, as Zeitzer puts it, “even by a window, it’s much brighter than what you’re going to get from most interior lighting sources.”