The Clocks Go Back on 25 October, and How to Ease Into the Darker Evenings

At 2am on Sunday 25 October, the clocks in the UK go back an hour and British Summer Time ends for the year. On paper it is the kind change: an extra hour in bed. In practice most of us notice the other half of the deal first, which is that by the Monday it is dark not long after you have shut the laptop.

The extra hour is also smaller than it sounds. Researchers at the University of Bristol looked at activity monitor data from around 11,800 people in the UK Biobank across the 2013 to 2015 clock changes, and published the results in the Journal of Sleep Research in 2024. On the Sunday the clocks went back, people slept just over 30 minutes more than on the surrounding Sundays, not the full hour. Earlier research has suggested that sleep can stay a little unsettled for around a week after either change, often because people wake earlier than they would like.

None of that is cause for worry. Your body keeps its own sense of time, and an hour is a small shift that most people settle into within days. But a little preparation can make the week after feel gentler, especially if your sleep is already a bit fragile at this time of year.

One simple idea is to drift rather than jump. In the few nights before the change, try going to bed and getting up around fifteen minutes later than usual, so by Saturday night you are already most of the way there. It is a gentler nudge than asking yourself to absorb the whole hour in one go.

Mornings matter as much as evenings. After the clocks go back, the light arrives earlier again for a while, which can tip you awake before the alarm. Keeping your wake time steady and getting outside soon after you get up, even for a short walk to the corner and back, helps your body take its cue from the new day rather than the old one.

Then there are the evenings, which is where the change is most noticeable. When it is dark by five, it is tempting to switch every light on and keep the day going. Instead, try giving the evening a clear turning point: big light off, a lamp or two on low, curtains drawn, kettle on. The dark outside can start to feel like permission to slow down rather than a day cut short.

Sound can help soften the shift too. A steady, quiet background makes a room feel settled, and it gives your evening a familiar shape when the light no longer does. In Create Your Zen, try the forest with rainfall layered underneath and a stream on low, and let it play while you cook or read. It will not fix a run of poor sleep, and if that has been going on for a while it is worth a chat with your GP. But for a week of darker evenings, small and kind routines tend to do more than you might expect.