Is taking a nap as effective as sleeping?

Not at all. Napping is useless in TS4.

Sleeping works better. Napping will rest your sim veeeeeeeeeery slowly and they lose their energy fast afterwards.

Napping can get your sims an energized buff, other than that, sleeping is better. I tend to let my sims take naps during the day because in real life sleeping for too long during the day would mess up your sleep schedule.

"logion;c-17685700" wrote:
Napping can get your sims an energized buff, other than that, sleeping is better. I tend to let my sims take naps during the day because in real life sleeping for too long during the day would mess up your sleep schedule.

Very true! My sims nap usually right before I need them to do something, like volunteer or go to a Scout meeting, etc. if their sleep need is low.

I did an experiment once where I let a household run on just autonomy alone--what I found is that they will rarely sleep on their own, they'll just take naps. The end result was that they were always tired, and so they were always taking naps

The only time napping is better than sleeping is when the sim in question has the dance machine trait. That trait gives the "disco nap" option that fill the energy bar almost completely in the same amount of time as a regular nap.

Yeah I usually only nap when I need bump a Sim into a better sleep schedule for work or college and such.

sleeping gets up energy faster then napping does.

base energy gain rates (excluding any multipliers):
napping: 0.25 (+0.5 if Dance Machine)
sleeping: 0.311

I wish it was! I dont know why those stupid sims prefer to do it when they are tired when they could have slept instead.