While people dream every night, not everyone remembers their dreams every single night. It can be frustrating not to be able to remember your dreams. However, it might not be reasonable to expect to be able to remember dreams every single night.
How often do people remember dreams?
Based upon a recent survey, nearly 11% of people remember their dreams every night. Only 6% of people report never remembering their dreams. About 29% of people report remembering dreaming a few times a week.
So, there is a wide range of how frequently people remember their dreams.
What are factors that affect remembering dreams?
Another study reports that people, on average, remember about 7-10 dreams per month. This, of course, is the global average. It combines people that remember their dreams every morning and people that report never remembering their dreams. But that’s about one dream every three days.
As can be seen in the figure from the same study, males may remember slightly fewer dreams than females. Additionally, dream recall seems to slightly decrease with older age.
One reason for this is that the amount of time spent in REM sleep decreases with age, as can be seen in this wonderful graph obtained from this review study. However, it is really interesting infants spend a profound amount of time in REM sleep.
How can I remember more dreams?
There’s a number of things that you can do to remember more dreams. Keeping a dream journal, having a good attitude toward dreams, and getting good sleep can all increase the chances of remembering your dreams.
