when does it start getting lighter

From an astronomical point of view, it starts getting lighter just after the winter solstice, when your hemisphere has its shortest day and longest night.

Key moment: winter solstice

• The winter solstice is the point where your part of Earth is tilted furthest away from the Sun, giving the least daylight of the year.

• After this moment, day length begins to increase again, so each day becomes a little lighter than the one before, even if it is hard to notice at first.

Rough dates (Northern Hemisphere)

• In the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice falls around 20–23 December each year, most commonly on 21 December.

• That means “it starts getting lighter” in late December, with the extra daylight becoming much more noticeable through January and February.

Why it doesn’t feel lighter right away

• Around the solstice, sunrise can still get slightly later for a short while, even though sunset gets later, so mornings can feel dark for weeks.

• This offset is caused by Earth’s tilted axis and its slightly elliptical orbit, which shift the times of sunrise and sunset relative to the actual shortest-day moment.

If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere

• The pattern is the same but flipped: it starts getting lighter after the June solstice, which is the Southern Hemisphere’s winter solstice.

• From then until the December solstice, days slowly grow longer and brighter.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.