A one-year-old needs about 11 to 14 hours of total sleep per day, including naps. Since most 12-month-olds nap for 2 to 3 hours during the day, that leaves roughly 10 to 12 hours of nighttime sleep as the target. Every child is slightly different, but that range is the sweet spot for healthy development at this age.
Nighttime Sleep vs. Total Sleep
The National Sleep Foundation’s expert panel recommends 11 to 14 hours of total daily sleep for toddlers aged 1 to 2. That number includes both nighttime sleep and daytime naps. At 12 months, most children are still taking two naps a day, each lasting about 60 to 120 minutes, for a combined 2 to 3 hours of daytime sleep. Subtract those nap hours, and you’re looking at 10 to 12 hours overnight as a reasonable goal.
Some one-year-olds consistently sleep 11 hours at night and take solid naps. Others sleep closer to 10 hours overnight but make up for it with longer daytime rest. What matters most is that the total adds up to at least 11 hours across the full 24-hour period. If your child is landing under that consistently, their sleep schedule likely needs adjusting.
What a Typical Schedule Looks Like
Most one-year-olds do well with a bedtime between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. and a wake-up between 6 and 7 a.m. The key to hitting that window is managing nap timing during the day. Avoiding naps after 3:30 p.m. helps ensure your child builds enough sleep pressure to fall asleep easily at bedtime.
At 12 months, the ideal nap schedule still includes two naps. A morning nap typically falls around 9:30 or 10 a.m., and an afternoon nap around 2 or 2:30 p.m. If your child starts resisting one of those naps, it can feel like a signal to drop down to one nap a day. But 12 months is usually too early for that transition. Dropping a nap prematurely often leads to chronic overtiredness, which can actually make nighttime sleep worse. If naps are being refused, try lengthening the awake time between naps rather than eliminating one. Most children aren’t truly ready for a single-nap schedule until closer to 14 months.
Why Your One-Year-Old Keeps Waking Up
Night wakings around 12 months are extremely common, and they don’t necessarily mean something is wrong. Around this age, children go through a wave of developmental changes: learning to stand and walk, developing stronger emotions, understanding more language, and becoming more aware of their surroundings. All of this brain activity can spill over into nighttime restlessness.
The most common contributors to disrupted sleep at this age include:
- Physical milestones. Pulling to stand, cruising, and early walking create restlessness and overstimulation that can carry into the night.
- Separation anxiety. Emotional and social development peaks around 12 months, and many toddlers suddenly struggle with being apart from a caregiver at bedtime or during the night.
- Teething. The first molars often arrive between 12 and 18 months, and the associated discomfort can wake a child who previously slept through the night.
- Schedule changes. Any shift in nap timing, bedtime routine, or sleep environment can temporarily disrupt overnight sleep.
This cluster of disruptions is sometimes called the 12-month sleep regression. It’s temporary. Most children move through it within a few weeks as they adjust to their new skills and settle back into a rhythm.
Signs Your Child Isn’t Getting Enough Sleep
One-year-olds can’t tell you they’re tired, and overtiredness often looks like the opposite of sleepy. When a toddler misses their sleep window or doesn’t get enough rest overall, their body releases stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. This puts them into a wired, fight-or-flight state rather than a calm, drowsy one. Instead of yawning and rubbing their eyes, an overtired one-year-old might get a sudden burst of energy, become hyperactive, or spiral into a full meltdown.
Other signs of insufficient sleep at this age include taking a very long time to fall asleep at bedtime (paradoxically, overtired children often fight sleep harder), waking more frequently overnight, and waking unusually early in the morning. If you notice this pattern repeating over several days, it usually points to a schedule issue: bedtime is too late, naps are too short, or the gap between the last nap and bedtime is too long.
How to Support Longer Nighttime Sleep
The single most effective thing you can do is protect the daytime nap schedule. It sounds counterintuitive, but toddlers who nap well during the day almost always sleep better at night. Skipping naps or keeping a child awake longer in hopes of a better night backfires because of that stress hormone response.
Keep bedtime consistent, ideally at the same time each night within a 30-minute window. A short, predictable routine before bed (a bath, a book, a song) signals to your child’s brain that sleep is coming. Dim the lights in the house about 30 minutes before you want them asleep.
If your child is waking at night due to separation anxiety, brief reassurance without picking them up or turning on lights can help them learn to resettle. For teething pain, comfort measures before bed can reduce the chance of a wake-up. And if your child is practicing new physical skills like standing in the crib at 2 a.m., give them plenty of floor time during the day to work on those skills so the novelty is less likely to keep them up at night.
The goal isn’t perfection. Some one-year-olds sleep 11 uninterrupted hours, and others still wake once or twice. What you’re aiming for is a consistent total that falls within the 11 to 14 hour daily range, with the bulk of that sleep happening overnight.