You start getting more daylight right after the winter solstice, which is around December 21 in the Northern Hemisphere, and the gain keeps building until about late June.

Key timing

  • The turning point is the winter solstice: that is the shortest day of the year; every day after that has a bit more daylight than the one before.
  • From late December through January, most mid‑latitude locations gain roughly 1–2 minutes of daylight per day , speeding up to around 2–3 minutes per day as you move into February and March.
  • The increase continues until the summer solstice around June 21, which is the longest day of the year.

What it feels like week by week

  • In the first week or two after the solstice, the change is tiny—just seconds to a couple of minutes over several days, so it barely feels different.
  • By mid to late January, many places are gaining on the order of 10–20 minutes of daylight per week , so sunsets noticeably creep later and mornings slowly brighten earlier.
  • By early March, lots of mid‑latitude cities have jumped from roughly 9 hours of daylight in late December to nearly 12 hours, which is when most people clearly feel “longer days” again.

Why it happens

  • The whole pattern is driven by Earth’s axial tilt and its orbit around the Sun, which set the solstice and equinox dates.
  • Day length doesn’t increase in a perfectly even way: sunrise and sunset times shift at slightly different rates, so sometimes evenings get noticeably lighter before mornings do.

In short: technically, you get more daylight starting the day after the winter solstice, but practically, most people really start to notice the difference from mid‑January onward as the gain speeds up week by week.

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