Should Your Dog or Cat Sleep in Your Bed? What the Sleep Studies Show

Somewhere between a seventh and well over half of pet owners let a dog or cat onto the bed. That spread, 14 to 62 percent, is the range a 2011 review in the CDC's journal Emerging Infectious Diseases pulled together from surveys in the United States, Britain, the Netherlands and France. The useful question is narrower: for this household, this animal and this sleeper, is the bed the right place, is a bed on the bedroom floor better, or does the animal belong in another room?

The short answer

For a healthy adult with a healthy, parasite-controlled dog or cat, the measured cost of sharing a bed is small, and the measured cost of having the animal in the bedroom but off the bed is smaller still. A bed of the animal's own beside yours is the arrangement the one direct comparison favours, and nothing else in the literature contradicts it.

The answer changes for four groups: a household with an infant or a very young child, a person whose immune system is compromised, anyone with a diagnosed pet allergy, and any dog that guards the bed. Each one is covered below.

What the sleep studies actually measured

The Mayo Clinic study. In 2017 a Mayo Clinic team put accelerometers on 40 healthy adults and their dogs for seven nights. Average human sleep efficiency, the share of time in bed actually spent asleep, came out at 81 percent, which the authors describe as good sleep efficiency. The finding that matters for this decision is the comparison inside the group: human sleep efficiency was lower when the dog was on the bed than when the dog was simply in the room. The authors concluded that a dog in the bedroom may not be the disruption it was assumed to be, but that its position on or off the bed made a difference.

The movement study. A 2020 study in Animals tracked 12 women and their dogs over 124 nights in one-minute intervals. Dog movement accompanied roughly half of all human movement, and a moving dog tripled the likelihood that a still sleeper started moving. The women, asked in a sleep diary, rarely reported that the dog had disturbed them. A dog on the bed nudges a sleeper's night in ways the sleeper does not remember in the morning.

The national survey. A 2024 study in Scientific Reports asked 1,591 US adults about their sleep, and 47.6 percent of them co-slept with a pet. Co-sleeping was associated with poorer perceived sleep quality and greater insomnia severity. In the exploratory analysis the effect tracked dog ownership rather than cat ownership, and it grew with the number of pets on the bed. It is a cross-sectional survey, so it shows an association rather than a cause, but its direction agrees with the Mayo and movement studies.

The children. A Concordia University study followed 188 children aged 11 to 17 with a night of home polysomnography and two weeks of actigraphy. A little over a third, 34.6 percent, co-slept with a pet sometimes or frequently. Their sleep profiles were largely the same as those of the children who never did, and the result held across questionnaires, polysomnography and actigraphy.

The cat question. Cats have far less sleep research behind them than dogs. A Swedish cohort of several thousand adults found that cat ownership was linked to slightly higher odds of sleeping under seven hours, an adjusted odds ratio of 1.18, while dog ownership showed no association. The authors themselves describe it as possibly a chance finding and hypothesis-generating only. It is a reason to watch a cat's night-time habits, not a verdict on cats in bedrooms.

Put together: a pet on the bed costs a measurable slice of sleep quality, mostly through movement, and mostly without the sleeper being aware of it. A pet on its own bed in the same room costs less. For most adults neither cost is large.

The infection question, sized honestly

The 2011 Emerging Infectious Diseases review searched the published literature for documented cases of people infected through sleeping with, kissing or being licked by a pet. It found them. The list includes plague in New Mexico and Arizona, cat-scratch disease, Pasteurella meningitis, Capnocytophaga septicaemia, a recurrent MRSA infection that only cleared once the family dog's nasal carriage was eradicated, and a mite dermatitis traced to a cat sleeping in its owner's bed.

The plague data are the most specific. In a 2008 case-control study the review summarises, four of nine plague survivors had slept in the same bed as a pet dog, against three of thirty matched controls. That is a matched odds ratio of 5.7, and dogs matter here because they carry infected fleas into a house while rarely showing signs of illness themselves.

The review's own first sentence in its recommendations is the part to hold onto: zoonotic infections acquired by sleeping with a pet are uncommon. The documented cases cluster in particular people. Infants appear repeatedly, as do people recovering from surgery with an open wound or a joint replacement, and people with chronic infections or weakened immunity. That is why the authors recommend that young children and immunocompromised people be discouraged from sharing a bed with a pet, rather than recommending it for everyone.

For a healthy adult, the measures the same review lists are the ones that shrink the risk most: keep the animal free of fleas, keep it on a deworming schedule, take it for regular veterinary checks, and wash any skin an animal has licked if there is a wound on it.

When the answer should be no

A baby or a young child in the bed or the room. The same review cites a Jamaican study in which a dog sleeping in a family member's bedroom was a risk factor for non-play dog bites, with a relative risk of 2.54. It also cites a US review of 109 dog-bite deaths in which 11 were sleeping infants. An infant does not share a bed with a dog or a cat, and a dog with any history of guarding or snapping should not sleep in the room where a baby sleeps.

A dog that guards the bed. The ASPCA's guidance on aggression in dogs names this pattern directly. Some dogs guard their favourite resting places, their crates and their beds, and these dogs often guard their owners' beds as well. Its list of common triggers includes disturbing a dog while it sleeps and physically moving it while it rests, which describes a bed shared with a restless human almost exactly. A dog that stiffens, freezes or growls when someone rolls over or gets in should come off the bed now.

A diagnosed allergy. The American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology's pet allergy guidance puts keeping the dog or cat out of the bedroom first on its list of strategies for people who keep the animal. Restricting the animal to a few rooms does not keep the allergen in those rooms, and HEPA cleaners run continuously in a bedroom reduce levels over time rather than removing them. The same page notes that no cat has been shown to be hypoallergenic, and that coat length is not associated with cat allergen levels. A short-haired cat is not the workaround.

A small dog and a tall bed. For a small dog, getting down from a standard mattress is a jump, repeated every night. For a dog with joint pain, the jump onto and off furniture is one of the specific movements worth removing, and a ramp or a floor-level bed beside yours removes it entirely.

The middle option most households should try first

A bed of the animal's own in the same room is the arrangement the Mayo Clinic comparison supports. It keeps the companionship most owners are after and takes the dog's movement off the mattress.

For a dog, the bed should sit close enough that the dog can see you, and be large enough for the way it actually sleeps. A dog that sprawls on your mattress will not curl on a small bolstered bed beside it. The bed buying criteria that matter for a bedroom floor are the same ones that matter anywhere: dense foam over thick foam, and a cover that comes off and goes in the machine. A crate works too. Placing a dog's crate in a bedroom at night is often better than a crate in a spare room, which teaches the dog that going in means being shut out.

For a cat, a floor bed in the middle of the room will usually be ignored. Cats choose height, warmth and a defensible view, so the version of this that works is a raised spot with a sight line to the bed: a bed on a dresser, a window shelf, or a cat tree placed with the same logic as where to put a cat tree in any other room.

Moving an animal off the bed goes more smoothly as a substitution than as a ban. Put the new bed in place first, make it the place that pays (a chew, a meal, a used T-shirt), and do the switch on a night when the animal is tired. For a cat that treats the bed as a launch pad at four in the morning, the fix is usually upstream of the bed itself. Moving the main play session to just before your own bedtime, with a meal straight after it, settles a cat that would otherwise be hunting your feet.

If the pet stays on the bed

Plenty of healthy adults will read all of this and keep the dog under the duvet, and the evidence does not call that a mistake. To keep the trade on the good side:

• Keep flea prevention current and keep the deworming schedule your vet sets. That is the single measure the infection review leans on hardest.
• Wash the bedding on the same cycle you would wash a pet bed, because the bed now is one.
• Do not let the animal lick a wound, a surgical site or the face of anyone who is ill or immunocompromised.
• Keep a floor bed in the room anyway. It gives the dog somewhere to go on a hot night, gives an older dog a way to stop jumping, and gives you an alternative the day the answer changes.

How to decide

Start from the person, not the animal. An infant in the household, a compromised immune system, a recent joint replacement or open wound, or a diagnosed allergy each move the pet out of the bed. A dog that guards the bed moves it out too. If none of those apply, sleep quality is the deciding factor. If you are tired and the dog is on the bed, a floor bed beside yours is the change the Mayo Clinic data most directly supports. If you sleep well and the animal is healthy and parasite-controlled, the measured risk is small and the choice is yours to make.

Questions people actually ask

Is it bad to let my dog sleep in my bed?

For a healthy adult with a healthy, flea-controlled dog, the measured cost is modest. A Mayo Clinic actigraphy study of 40 adults found sleep efficiency was lower when the dog was on the bed than when it was elsewhere in the bedroom, and a 2024 survey of 1,591 US adults linked co-sleeping with dogs to poorer perceived sleep quality. A dog bed in the same room keeps the company and removes most of that cost.

Do cats disrupt sleep more than dogs?

The evidence is thin and points in different directions. A 2024 US survey linked poorer sleep to co-sleeping with dogs but not cats, while a Swedish cohort found cat ownership slightly associated with sleeping under seven hours and called that result possibly a chance finding. Watch your own cat's night-time habits rather than relying on either study.

Can you catch anything from sleeping with a pet?

Yes, but rarely. A 2011 review in the CDC's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal documented cases including plague, cat-scratch disease and Pasteurella infections linked to bed-sharing or licking, and concluded that such infections are uncommon. It recommends that young children and immunocompromised people not share a bed with pets, and that pets be kept free of fleas, dewormed and regularly checked by a veterinarian.

Should a dog sleep in the same room as a baby?

Not in the same bed, and not in the room at all if the dog has any history of guarding or snapping. The same CDC journal review cites a study in which a dog sleeping in a family member's bedroom was a risk factor for non-play bites, and a review of US dog-bite deaths in which 11 of 109 were sleeping infants.

My dog growls when I move him off the bed. What should I do?

Stop sharing the bed and get professional help. The ASPCA lists guarding of beds, including owners' beds, as a recognised form of possessive aggression, and being disturbed while resting as a common trigger. Start with your vet, since pain can drive the change, then see a certified applied animal behaviorist or a veterinary behaviorist.

Will keeping my cat out of the bedroom help my allergy?

It is the first step the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology recommends, but it will not keep allergen confined to the other rooms. Continuous HEPA filtration in the bedroom reduces levels over time, and no cat has been shown to be hypoallergenic. An allergist can advise on treatment.

Sources

• Chomel BB, Sun B. Zoonoses in the bedroom. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2011, 17(2), 167-172
• Patel SI et al. The effect of dogs on human sleep in the home sleep environment. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2017, 92(9), 1368-1372
• Hoffman CL, Browne M, Smith BP. Human-animal co-sleeping: an actigraphy-based assessment of dogs' impacts on women's nighttime movements. Animals, 2020, 10(2), 278
• Chin BN, Singh T, Carothers AS. Co-sleeping with pets, stress, and sleep in a nationally-representative sample of United States adults. Scientific Reports, 2024, 14(1), 5577
• Rowe H et al. The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime: the effects of pet-human co-sleeping and bedsharing on sleep dimensions of children and adolescents. Sleep Health, 2021, 7(3), 324-331
• van Egmond LT et al. Association between pet ownership and sleep in the Swedish CArdioPulmonary bioImage Study (SCAPIS). Scientific Reports, 2021, 11(1), 7468
• ASPCA: Aggression in dogs
• American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology: Pet allergies