You don’t necessarily dream during every stage of sleep. They seem to happen mostly during the REM stage. Keep reading to learn more about dreams and the sleep cycle.

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Though you might wake up feeling as if you dreamed all night long, you don’t necessarily dream during every stage of sleep. Keep reading to explore how and when your dreams float in.

Sleep happens in two main stages. There’s rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep.

NREM is further split into three distinct substages:

  • N1
  • N2
  • N3

When you sleep, you cycle through all stages of NREM and REM sleep several times. Deeper, longer REM sleep usually happens near the morning.

Here’s what goes on during these periods of sleep.

NREM Stage N1

You can consider this stage the “falling asleep” stage.

This first and lightest stage of sleep involves:

  • slower heartbeat and breathing
  • slow, rolling eye movements
  • relaxing muscles

You might wake up easily, often without knowing you had already fallen asleep.

NREM Stage N2

Next is the “light sleep” stage, the one you enter before reaching deep sleep.

This stage involves:

  • a drop in body temperature
  • even slower breathing and heartbeat
  • unmoving eyes

You’ll spend most of your time asleep in this stage. While you may not wake up quite so easily as you might during N1 sleep, it’s still fairly easy to be woken up during this sleep stage.

NREM Stage N3

This stage is your deepest sleep state.

Slow-wave sleep involves:

You won’t wake easily from this stage of sleep.

REM Stage R

REM sleep is where dreams happen. It generally begins about an hour to 90 minutes after you fall asleep and involves two separate phases:

  • phasic REM sleep, during which your eyes will move rapidly in short bursts
  • tonic REM sleep, which doesn’t involve these eye movements

In the REM stage of sleep, your breathing will speed up slightly, and you may experience temporary paralysis as you begin to dream. This prevents you from acting out your dreams.

People spend around 2 hours dreaming every night. You probably won’t remember every single one of those dreams, though.

If someone wakes you up during REM sleep, you might know you were just dreaming. When someone wakes you up during NREM sleep, on the other hand, you’re far less likely to feel as if you were just dreaming.

Can you ever dream during non-REM sleep?

Dreams can happen during any stage of sleep, but the vivid ones that you remember tend to happen during REM sleep.

In a 2020 study, 20 participants were woken up from REM sleep and NREM stage 2 sleep over the course of several nights. The researchers found that descriptions of dream experiences in the NREM phase tended to be more abstract than descriptions of REM dream experiences, which were more elaborate and followed a narrative.

Dream recall was more prevalent after REM sleep. Participants were also more likely to report not having a dream or having a white dream after NREM sleep. A white dream is when you can remember the feeling of dreaming but not what it was about.

It’s not uncommon to want to get rid of nightmares, have more interesting dreams, or control what happens during your dreams.

Unfortunately, you can’t always pop out of a nightmare or a boring dream as easily as you might think. Still, during REM sleep, you could have some level of consciousness of the fact that you’re dreaming.

About 55% of people will have this type of dream, called a lucid dream, at least once in their life. 23% of people experience this regularly, around once a month or more. You can change or control the content of a lucid dream.

Research has found that these methods may help you lucid dream:

  • Wake back to bed method (WBTB). As the name of this approach implies, you wake up shortly after going to sleep. For example, you can set an alarm for 5 hours post-bedtime and fall asleep like you usually would. After your alarm goes off, stay awake for about 30 minutes doing a calm activity that keeps you alert, like reading. Go back to sleep after that period and you may experience a lucid dream.
  • Mnemonic induction of lucid dreams (MILD). With this method, you set an intention for yourself ahead of time to remember that you’re dreaming. You can do this by repeating this intention out loud to yourself.

A note on lucid dreaming

Researchers have found that lucid dreaming can occur with sleep paralysis, short episodes where you lose muscle function while waking up or shortly after falling asleep.

You might sense a presence in your room or have a hallucination-like experience that feels as if you’re dreaming while awake.

Since you can’t move, episodes of sleep paralysis can feel scary. But the good news is that they go away on their own, usually within a couple of minutes.

The vivid dreams that stick with you into the morning usually happen during REM sleep — but you can dream during other stages of the sleep cycle, too.

You may be able to control the contents of your dreams through lucid dreaming. But even if you don’t remember your dreams, but you’re still having them.

Breanna Mona is a writer based in Cleveland, Ohio. She holds a master’s degree in media and journalism and writes about health, lifestyle, and entertainment.