I found my sleep chronotype – and here's how you can find yours

It goes without saying that we all want to understand more about the way we sleep. Whether you’re out like a light as soon as your head hits the pillow or you wake up throughout the night, everyone wants to know more about their sleeping habits and how they help us sleep better.

One of the most popular ways to do this is by using the best sleep trackers, but if you don’t have a fitness tracker or smartwatch, you might want to try finding your sleep chronotype.

According to The Sleep Foundation, your sleep chronotype regulates your sleep and wake up times and influences your appetite and body temperature. Understanding your chronotype is also said to help you sleep better and drift off easier as you’re more in tune with your body’s needs and habits.

Personally, I’m all about understanding my sleep patterns, so I decided to find my sleep chronotype by taking the Sunrise by Emma Sleep Chronotype quiz – and here’s what I found…

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What’s a chronotype?

If you’re new to sleep chronotypes, let’s first explain what a chronotype is. A chronotype is your body’s natural inclination to sleep at a certain time. Closely related to your circadian rhythm, a chronotype is responsible for your alertness and sleepiness during certain times of the day. A simple way to categorise this is whether you see yourself as an early bird or a night owl.

There are four types of sleep chronotypes: bear, lion, wolf and dolphin.

Bear: The most popular chronotype. Sleep and wake cycles are according to the sun

Lion: Early risers and early sleepers

Wolf: Most productive and energetic during the night, finding it hard to wake up in the morning

Dolphin: The rarest chronotype. Trouble following any sleep schedule with peak productivity levels between 10am - 2pm

Now you understand the different chronotypes, let’s get into the quiz.

Taking the sleep chronotype quiz

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To take this sleep chronotype quiz, all you have to do is go to the Sunrise by Emma website which is the Emma mattress blog. Once you’ve done that, all you need to do is answer some questions. Straight off the bat, there are only three options you can get: bear, lion or wolf. As there are four chronotypes, I did find this odd, but as the dolphin is so rare (accounting for only 10% of the population, according to Casper), it might be harder to identify this.

The questions are in depth and ask you about your sleep habits, when you wake up in the morning, do you snooze your alarms, how do you feel during the day, how long do you sleep for, etc. The questions also look into your eating and drinking, including your alcohol and nicotine consumption, and when you eat your meals. The questions also look into your wake up and wind down times, too.

Once you finish these questions, you’ll need to give them your age and gender, before you put in your email for the results. The quiz was relatively easy to take, a mix between multiple choice and sliders, and as you went through, the webpage went from night time to daytime which I thought was a nice touch!

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The results

Now for the results! When you get your results, you’ll receive your sleep chronotype and sleep score. As you can see above, I got the bear chronotype which isn’t surprising as 60% of the population fall under this category. According to my results, I’m neither a morning or evening person and my internal body clock is in tune with a dawn to dusk routine. I also got a 70% sleep score which means my sleep patterns are almost perfect – not bad at all.

While most quizzes will just explain what your chronotype is, the Sunrise by Emma quiz also gave me personalised tips around how to improve my sleep score and how to tap into my bear chronotype more for a better night’s sleep. To fall asleep quicker, I need to be practicing mindfulness and breath work, and to sleep better overall, I should try morning workouts, spacing out my afternoons with lighter tasks and eating a lighter dinner before winding down without devices.

Overall, I’d say the quiz and tips were pretty helpful, considering I had no idea about chronotypes before I took it! Some of the tips might sound a little obvious but the full breakdown of my sleep score did help me understand why I wake up through the night, my sleep depth and how to drift off quicker.

If you want to understand more about your sleep and you have a Fitbit, find out what Fitbit Sleep Animal you are with one of the best Fitbits.