What Do You Do When Sims Won’t Sleep? 5 Ways To Troubleshoot

Uncooperative sims won’t sleep? Troubleshoot with us and soon they’ll be drifting off to dreamland!

We’ve all had bouts of insomnia from time to time. You crawl into bed but just can’t drift off, or maybe you don’t feel tired at your normal bedtime. It can be super frustrating, especially when you have things to do the following day that require you to be well-rested. As someone who has never slept well even since infancy, I can relate!

It’s just as annoying when your sims won’t sleep. Most sims have 8 standard Needs that must be maintained for them to thrive, and the Energy Need might be the most important. Sleepy sims will refuse to do certain tasks, be less effective when they do perform tasks, and can even pass out where they stand. It’s extra stressful when your sim is planning on doing something that requires lots of Energy, like climbing Mt. Komorebi or exploring the jungles of Selvadorada.

What To Do When Sims Won’t Sleep

Luckily, for the most part, it’s not difficult to get your sims to sleep. If they refuse, it’s usually due to a gameplay reason which we can typically fix without a lot of hassle. So if your sims won’t sleep and you can’t figure out why, give these troubleshooting tips a try.

1. Noisy Surroundings

Sims can have trouble falling asleep if there are things in the area that are causing unpleasant noises. Crying babies, music your sim hates, fire alarms, and more can interrupt your sim while they’re trying to get some shut-eye. If a sim is asleep and one of these noisy things awakens them, take a look at their thought bubbles to identify the cause and rectify the situation.

2. Interfering Moodlets

Sometimes sims aren’t in the mood to sleep. This is especially true when they’re feeling strong emotions, and the Scared moodlet is one of the worst offenders. Living in a Haunted House, being visited by a Monster under the bed, Alien Abduction, and more can cause your sim to be too terrified to sleep no matter how exhausted they are! Wait until the moodlet passes, or use a cheat to make them happy again.

3. Inaccessible Beds

Sims won’t sleep in a bed they can’t access! There are a few reasons your sim might have issues getting into bed, and it’s more likely to be the cause if you use MoveObjects when furnishing your sim’s sleeping area. Major culprits you might not consider are accent tables that are too close to the bed, lights/decorations over the bed that hang too low, items placed close to the sides of the bed, or beds too close to the wall. If you find this is the issue your sim will usually communicate to you what’s in the way, but your best bet is to go into Buy/Build Mode with MoveObjects disabled and re-place all items around the bed area.

4. Unappealing Partners

Nobody wants to share a bed with someone they’re not comfortable with. You don’t have to be in love with another sim to share a mattress, but your sims won’t want to get cozy with anybody they don’t know well enough to consider a friend. Work on raising the relationship between the two sims, buy another bed, or have one character nap on the couch or elsewhere while the other takes the bedroom.

More on SNOOTYSIMS: Read this to unlock fresh, stylish, and unique Sims 4 bedroom ideas that will transform your Sims’ sleeping spaces and help them have restful nights!

5. Non-Cooperative Mods

There are a lot of ways mods can make it so your sims won’t sleep, so you might need to do extensive testing to suss it out. It’s possible the bed you’ve chosen is broken if you’re using a CC model; beds have been updated several times throughout the life of The Sims 4 so an outdated bed might not work, nor a bed that isn’t properly tagged or lacks a valid footprint. You can easily test this by switching the bed out with a vanilla bed and seeing if your sim will sleep in it. Same with CC furniture in the area, a bad footprint or mesh might make the bed appear “blocked” to your sim.

Any gameplay mod that affects the sim’s sleep or Energy levels could cause the problem and you’ll have to troubleshoot your mods to eliminate this as the cause. Even mods not related to sleep at all can be the culprit, since mods can conflict in really funky ways sometimes. Remove all your script mods and see if your sim will go to bed; if so, you know that something is conflicting there and you can use your method of choice to locate the bad mod(s).

Conclusion

Got cranky sims who won’t sleep no matter how many times you tell them to, even though they’re tired enough to fall asleep in their soup? As badly as they want to go to bed, they just might not be able to. It might be too loud or your sims might be too upset to relax. They might not be able to get into bed or find someone else already there that they don’t want to sleep next to. Or, it could be a mod or CC and not your sim’s fault at all. If your sims won’t sleep, try these tips, and with any luck they’ll be drifting off in no time. Sweet dreams!

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