when will it stop getting dark early

It stops “getting dark early” once your days start getting noticeably longer again after the winter solstice, and even more so after the spring clock change where that applies.

Key idea

• In the Northern Hemisphere, the shortest day is the winter solstice, around 21–22 December each year. From that point on, total daylight slowly increases a little each day.

• Even so, the earliest sunset usually happens a week or two before the solstice, and the latest sunrise a week or two after , which is why it can still feel like it’s getting dark early well into early January.

When it starts to feel lighter

• By late January and through February, most mid‑latitude places have gained roughly an hour or more of extra daylight compared with the solstice, so evenings start to feel noticeably lighter.

• After the March equinox (around 20 March), day and night are about equal, and in many countries the spring clock change pushes sunset an extra hour later, making “dark early” stop being a daily annoyance.

Why this happens at all

• The Earth’s axis is tilted about 23.5 degrees, so in winter your hemisphere is tilted away from the Sun and gets fewer hours of light.

• Because Earth’s orbit is slightly elliptical and the length of the “solar day” shifts by seconds over the year, sunrise and sunset times don’t change perfectly symmetrically around the solstice, causing that weird period where mornings still get darker even though the “shortest day” has passed.

What this means for you

• If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere and it’s just after New Year, it will keep getting a bit lighter every day, but evenings usually start to feel better first, then mornings catch up.

• By late winter and early spring, most people feel that it’s finally not “getting dark early” anymore, as sunset moves into the later afternoon and then early evening.

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