Free blood pressure log sheet.
Track every reading with the right columns. Print it out or log it on your phone with BP Central. Either way, you will have data your doctor can actually use.
Prefer your phone? Log your first 10 readings free in BP Central. The paper sheet still works, and plenty of people use both.
Coming to Google Play
First 10 readings free. Then $6.99 once. No subscription. iPhone.
First 10 readings free. Then $6.99 once. No subscription. iPhone.
Why tracking your readings matters.
A single reading tells your doctor almost nothing. Blood pressure changes hour to hour based on stress, sleep, salt, and activity. A log gives them a real picture over time.
High every morning but settled by night? A log shows you that. One clinic reading never would, because it only ever catches one moment of one day.
Hand your doctor 30 days of readings instead of one office number. They can adjust medication, confirm control, or rule out white coat hypertension in minutes.
Log your notes column honestly. You will quickly see if salt, sleep, stress, or skipped medication is driving your numbers up.
What each column means.
A good blood pressure log has 7 columns. Here is what each one records and why it matters.
Lets you spot patterns over days and weeks. Your doctor will want to see trends, not just one number.
Blood pressure shifts throughout the day. Morning readings are often highest. Logging the time shows that pattern clearly.
The top number. It measures the force of blood against your artery walls when your heart beats.
The bottom number. It measures pressure between beats, when your heart rests and refills.
Heart rate (beats per minute). Some medications lower both blood pressure and pulse. Tracking both helps your doctor fine-tune your care.
Readings can differ between arms by up to 10 mmHg. Use the same arm each time so your data is consistent.
A place to flag anything unusual: skipped medication, stress, illness, caffeine, exercise. These are often the reason a reading looks off.
Sample blood pressure log.
Here is what a week of readings looks like filled in correctly. Notice two readings per day and the notes column.
| Date | Time | Sys | Dia | Pulse | Arm | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 04/14 | 7:30 AM | 126 | 80 | 66 | L | Before coffee |
| 04/14 | 9:00 PM | 118 | 74 | 62 | L | After walk |
| 04/15 | 7:45 AM | 130 | 82 | 70 | L | Stressed at work |
| 04/15 | 9:15 PM | 122 | 76 | 64 | L | - |
| 04/16 | 7:30 AM | 121 | 77 | 65 | L | Medication on time |
| 04/16 | 8:45 PM | 116 | 72 | 60 | L | Good sleep |
| 04/17 | 7:40 AM | 128 | 81 | 69 | L | Salty dinner last night |
Sample data only. Values shown are for illustration purposes.
Tips for accurate readings.
- Sit quietly for 5 minutes before measuring.
- Keep your feet flat on the floor and your arm at heart level.
- Take two readings, 2 minutes apart, and record both.
- Avoid caffeine, exercise, and smoking for 30 minutes before.
- Use the same arm every time.
Paper log or phone app?
Paper log sheet
- No phone required
- Easy to bring to appointments
- No automatic trends or averages
- Can get lost or damaged
- Manual math to find your average
BP Central app
- 7, 30 and 90 day trend charts
- Averages worked out for you
- A summary you can send from your phone
- AHA reference ranges built in
- First 10 readings free, then $6.99 once
Stop losing readings on scraps of paper.
BP Central logs every reading on your phone, shows your 7, 30 and 90 day trends, and writes a summary you can send.
Prefer your phone? Log your first 10 readings free in BP Central. The paper sheet still works, and plenty of people use both.
Coming to Google Play
First 10 readings free. Then $6.99 once. No subscription. iPhone.
First 10 readings free. Then $6.99 once. No subscription. iPhone.
What goes in a blood pressure log
Seven things, and no more than seven. A log is a record of readings, not a health diary, and the temptation to add weight, mood, steps and diet is how a log becomes a chore you abandon in week three.
- The date
- Obvious until you are looking at an undated sheet in a waiting room.
- The time
- Readings move through the day. A column of numbers with no times cannot show a morning pattern.
- The top number
- Systolic, the larger one.
- The bottom number
- Diastolic, the smaller one.
- Your pulse
- Most monitors show it alongside. Write down whatever it displays.
- Which arm
- Use the same one every time, and note which it was, so the readings compare with each other.
- Anything unusual
- A missed dose, a bad night, a rushed morning, a coffee you forgot about. Usually one word, and often the word that explains an odd reading.
Nothing on that list is medical information about you beyond the reading itself. If a clinician has asked you to record something else as well, record that too — but do not invent extra fields because a template had them.
How many readings, and when
Enough that one odd morning cannot move the answer. The joint statement from the American Heart Association and the American Medical Association describes the routine most home monitoring research is built on.
- Readings per sitting
- 2, at least 1 minute apart
- Sittings per day
- 2, morning and evening
- Readings per day
- 4
- The fuller picture
- 7 days, 28 readings
- The minimum
- 3 days, 12 readings
American Heart Association and American Medical Association, Self-Measured Blood Pressure Monitoring at Home: A Joint Policy Statement, Circulation. 2020;142(4):e42-e63.
If your doctor gave you a different routine, use theirs. They asked for a reason, and a general protocol on a website does not know it.
How to organise it so it stays useful
- Group by day, and split morning from evening. A flat list of thirty readings hides the thing most worth seeing, which is whether your mornings and evenings differ.
- Keep it in one place. Two half-logs, one on paper and one in an app, is worse than either on its own. Pick the one you will actually keep.
- Write the reading down when you take it. Not later. The gap between the monitor beeping and finding a pen is where home logs die.
- Do not tidy it up. Leaving out the readings that look bad turns a record into an argument. The high ones are the ones the average exists to put in context.
- Start a fresh sheet per week. It makes the set you are averaging obvious, and it stops one page turning into an undated year.
Our printable is laid out this way already: seven days, four readings each, morning and evening split, with a box at the end for the two averages.
Paper or an app?
Paper is free, needs no charging, works with any monitor and a clinic can read it the second you hand it over. It loses on exactly two things, and both of them arrive after the first month: working out the averages, and still having in June the readings you took in February.
We make an app and we give the printable away free, so take that as read. We compared the two properly, row by row, on a separate page rather than repeating the argument here.
Taking it to an appointment
Bring the readings themselves and the two averages across them. A set of readings with one average is something a clinician can work from in a minute; a remembered number is not.
We are not going to tell you what format your practice wants, because they differ and some will have given you a sheet of their own already. If yours did, theirs wins.