.svg)
The Best Cities for a Good Night’s Sleep
We’ve ranked cities globally to find out where gets the best quality sleep
We’re often reminded about how important it is to maintain a good sleep schedule, but getting enough rest is easier said than done. A good night’s sleep can relieve stress, help with focus, and is generally good for your health.
While there are many factors involved in having a good night’s sleep, at health insurance comparison service iSelect, we were curious to see just how different environmental factors can impact our sleep and how it compares across cities in Australia, the USA and the UK. We measured each location on factors like their average hours of darkness, their light pollution, the number of searches for noise complaints in the area, and more. Then putting all these results into an index, we’ve scored each city out of 100 to reveal some of the world’s most restful cities. Here are the top ten cities in our rankings:
1. Newcastle, Australia
Newcastle scores highly across all the categories in the index, making it the ideal city for getting a perfect night’s sleep. With 11.9 hours of darkness on average, and just 30 searches for noise complaints in a typical month, its conditions are great for getting enough rest every night. Plus, its average nighttime temperature is 19.67°C, which is just 1.37°C above the sweet spot for sleep (18.3°C1https://www.nytol.co.uk/what-is-the-best-temperature-for-sleep). Scoring a total of 92.24 out of 100, it tops our list of British, American, and Australian cities.
2. Wollongong, Australia
In a close second place, with a score of 90.70 on our list, is Wollongong. It ties with Newcastle on its search volume for noise complaints (an average of 30 per month) and its typical 11.9 hours of darkness. However, with a higher average level of light pollution (56.91 nW/cm²/sr, compared to Newcastle’s 26.74), it falls slightly behind to take a silver medal.
3. Canberra, Australia
Continuing the trend of Australian cities being great for sleep quality, Canberra takes third place on our rankings. The capital has an impressively low level of light pollution (2.96 nW/cm²/sr), but has a higher level of noise complaint searches, with an average of 140 monthly. Overall, it scores 87.61 on our index.
4. Adelaide, Australia
Continuing Australia’s great performance in our rankings, Adelaide ranks fourth on our list of the best cities for sleeping. Its 140 average monthly searches for noise complaints and 11.9 hours of darkness make it a strong city for sleep quality. Plus, with an average nighttime temperature of 18.75°C, it’s the second closest city on our list to the 18.3°C sweet spot. It earns a score of 80.54 out of 100 in total.
5. Gold Coast, Australia
Australian cities complete our top five rankings with the Gold Coast, scoring a total of 66.05 on our index. While the score is considerably lower than the other cities in our top five, it has 11.89 average hours of darkness and light pollution levels of 32.27, making for a strong performance. However, as a holiday destination for a lot of Aussies it had a high search volume of 320 searches for noise complaints every month, meaning it experiences a higher volume of noise issues than the other cities in our top five.
6. Bristol, United Kingdom
Making the first UK appearance on our list, Bristol ranks in sixth place scoring a total of 63.81 on our index of the world’s most restful cities. With 11.75 average hours of darkness, it’s the British city with one of the longest nights, as well as having the lowest levels of light pollution in the country (50.24 nW/cm²/sr). However, with an average nighttime temperature of 9.81°C, it could be too cold for some people.
7. San Jose, USA
San Jose reaches an average of 19.64°C at night, earning it the highest place of any American city on our list and ranking in seventh overall. Its average of 11.88 hours of darkness also give it a strong score, along with having the fewest searches for noise complaints in the country (260 per month on average). These combine to give it a total index score of 61.24 out of 100.
8. Liverpool, United Kingdom
Liverpool scores 57.79 on our Sleep Quality Index, and is the second-best British city for getting a good night’s sleep, and the eighth-best overall in our rankings. Liverpool has the joint fewest searches for noise complaints in the UK (tied with Sheffield), with an average of just 110 queries every month. Plus, while its light pollution levels of 108.83 are higher than other cities in our top ten, they’re still below the average of 117.21.
9. Nottingham, United Kingdom
Nottingham ranked at number nine in our rankings to take its place as the third-best British city for a good night’s sleep. It finishes in the top five UK cities with the least light pollution, with levels of 74.66 on average. It also has low numbers of noise complaints (140 searches per month on average) and receives an average of 11.74 hours of darkness every day. These combine to give it a score of 56.93 out of 100.
10. Logan City, Australia
Heading back to Australia for the final entry on our top ten, Logan City rounds out our rankings with a total score of 56.40. It’s the warmest Australian city at night on our list, with average temperatures of 23.06°C, but its low light pollution levels (28.48) and 11.9 average hours of darkness land it a place in the top ten regardless.
“If you’re finding it tough to get a good night’s sleep or you’re dealing with mental health challenges, it’s important to reach out for support. Some private health insurance plans can help cover things like mental health services and sleep studies. For support, iSelect can help compare your options from a range of health funds to find a health insurance plan that’s right for you.”
General Manager – Health at iSelect
Written by:
Sarah Grealy
Digital Public Relations Specialist
0413 363 690
Sarah is our Digital Public Relations Specialist, and brings more than a decade of experience in the insurance comparison industry to iSelect.
With a passion for storytelling through data-driven insights, Sarah strives to empower Aussies with practical guides and tips.
About the data
- Noise Complaints: Using the prompt “Noise Complaint {City}” the average monthly search volume was collected from Google Keyword Planner, selecting the city’s country when running each search with a data range of the past two years set. This resulted in no data for EU countries, so a secondary dataset was created with EU countries excluded from this variable. Where a data point was missing in the other cities, an average for its respective country was used to fill in the missing number.
- Average Hours of Darkness: Data was collected on the sunset and sunrise times for the whole year of 2024 for each city using the Python package astral. This was used to calculate the hours of darkness every night of the year. From these numbers, the average nightly hours of darkness were calculated for each city.
- Average Light Pollution 2024: Shape files were created for each of the cities on the list, and paired data from the Earth observation group on light pollution were used to calculate the radiance of each city. This is measured in narrowatts per square centimetre per steradian (nW/cm²/sr), and the higher the radiance, the higher the light pollution of a city.
- Temperature Score: Using data from Meteostat, the temperature was collected every hour between 9 pm and 7 am for each city every night in 2024. All of these temperatures were averaged to give an average night temperature for each city. The best temperature for sleep is 18.3 °C, according to Nytol. Using that number, a temperature score was calculated by dividing the difference between the average temperature and the ideal temperature (Absolute Value) by the maximum difference in the dataset. This gives a temperature score where 0 is closest to ideal and 1 is furthest from ideal.
Best City for Sleep Index: A final Best City for Sleep Index was calculated by first calculating a percentage rank for each metric within its dataset, multiplying it by a weighting, and then summing all the metrics together. For Average Monthly SV for “Noise Complaint {City}” (weighted at 0.35) and the average temperature score (weighted at 0.25), average Light Pollution 2024 (weighted at 0.3), the inverse of percent rank was used for hours of darkeness (weighted at 0.1), so a lower score was considered better than a higher score.
Sources:
https://pypi.org/project/astral/
https://eogdata.mines.edu/products/vnl/
https://meteostat.net/en/
https://www.nytol.co.uk/what-is-the-best-temperature-for-sleep
iSelect does not compare all health insurance providers or policies in the market. The availability of policies will change from time to time. Not all policies available from its providers are compared by iSelect and due to commercial arrangements, your stated needs and circumstances, not all policies compared by iSelect are available to all customers. Some policies and special offers are available only from iSelect’s contact centre or website. Click here to view iSelect’s range of providers.
About 
At iSelect, we’re passionate about making Aussies’ lives easier by saving them time, effort and money. We are Australia’s go-to destination for comparison across insurance, utilities and personal finance products made available from our range of providers. Our service is provided at no cost to the customer.
iSelect General Pty Ltd (ABN 90 131 798 126. AFSL 334115) has partnered with Compare the Market (ABN 83 117 323 378. AFSL 422926) to compare a range of car insurers and policies. Not all providers in the market or all policies offered by the partners are compared and not all policies or special offers are available to all customers.
A number of our participating general insurance brands are arranged by Auto & General Services Pty Ltd ACN 003 617 909 on behalf of Auto & General Insurance Company Limited 111 586 353, both of which are related entities of iSelect Limited. Our relationship with those companies does not impact the integrity of our comparison service. Click here to view iSelect’s range of providers.
Any advice provided by iSelect is of a general nature and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. You need to consider the appropriateness of any information or general advice iSelect gives you, having regard to your personal situation, before acting on iSelect’s advice or purchasing any policy. You should consider iSelect’s Financial Services Guide which provides information about our services and your rights as a client of iSelect. iSelect receives commission for each policy sold that is a percentage of the premium or a flat fee. Ask us for more details before we provide you with any services.