What is a normal breathing rate? Adults and children

How to count your breathing rate

1. Sit and rest for at least five minutes.
2. Using a watch or phone timer, count how many times your chest or tummy rises in one full minute. One rise and fall is one breath.
3. Write it down, with the time and what you were doing.

Counting someone else’s breathing is more accurate, because people change their breathing as soon as they notice it. Nurses often count while seeming to take a pulse.

What NHS staff look for

NHS hospitals and ambulance services record breathing rate as one of six measurements on the National Early Warning Score (NEWS2) chart, from the Royal College of Physicians. Each measurement scores points according to how far it is from normal, and a higher total means a patient may be getting more unwell. For breathing rate in adults:

Breathing rate is often the first measurement to change when someone is becoming seriously ill, for example with a chest infection, sepsis or heart failure. Breathing very fast is one of the signs of sepsis in adults.

Why breathing exercises go below 12

The scale above shows where common breathing exercises take you. Resonance breathing slows you to 6 breaths a minute, and box breathing to under 4. That is safe: you are awake, choosing to breathe slowly for a few minutes, and your breaths are a little bigger to make up for it.

A slow rate is only a worry when it happens on its own, at rest, in someone who is drowsy, confused or hard to wake, or who has taken strong painkillers, sedatives or alcohol. That needs urgent help: call 999.

Children’s breathing rates

Children breathe faster than adults, and the younger they are, the faster. A 2011 review of studies in healthy children found that the median rate falls from about 44 breaths a minute at birth to about 26 at age two, with the steepest fall in the first two years, and continues to fall through childhood towards adult rates.

Call 999 if a baby or child is struggling to breathe, making grunting noises, sucking their stomach in under their ribs, or has lips or skin turning pale, blue or grey.

What about my watch?

Many smartwatches and rings estimate your breathing rate overnight. Your own usual range is what matters. A rate that stays well above your normal for several nights can be an early sign of illness, but these devices are not medical tests, so go by how you feel and get checked if you are unwell.