The electronic relaxation dynamics of the second singlet excited states of several cyanine dyes was studied through the femtosecond fluorescence up-conversion technique. Our interest in these molecules comes from the potential applications of systems with upper excited singlet states with a long lifetime, which can include electron and energy transfer from the higher lying singlets after one- or two-photon absorption. We studied three series of cyanines with 4-quinolyl, 2-quinolyl, or benzothiazolyl type end groups, each with varying sp(2) carbon conjugation lengths in the methinic bridge. The dynamics after electronic excitation to singlet states above the fluorescent state vary significantly as a function of cyanine structure and conjugation length. In particular, for the 4-quinolyl series the cyanine with an intermediate conjugation length (three methinic carbons) has the slowest S-2 decays with lifetimes of 5.4 ps in ethanol and 6.6 ps in ethylene glycol. On the other hand, we observed that the 2-quinolyl family has S-2 decay times in the subpicosecond range independent of the conjugation length between the end groups. The slowest internal conversion was observed for the benzothiazolyl type cyanine with five methinic carbons, with an S-2 lifetime of 17.3 ps in ethanol. For the planar cyanines of this study we observed for the first time a clear systematic trend in the S-2 decay times which closely follow the energy gap law. It was also demonstrated that a slow S-2 decay is as well observed upon excitation through degenerate two-photon absorption with near-IR pulses. The present study isolates the most important variables for the design of cyanines with long S-2 lifetimes.