Sleeping around a night shift
On at 10:00 pm, off at 6:00 am: 8h on shift and 16h between one ending and the next beginning.
In bed at 7:00 am, 1 hour after clocking off. The rows differ only in when you get up.
| Up at | Cycles | Until the next start |
|---|---|---|
| 2:45 pm | 5 cycles | 7h 15m |
| 1:15 pm | 4 cycles | 8h 45m |
| 11:45 am | 3 cycles | 10h 15m |
| 10:15 am | 2 cycles | 11h 45m |
7h 30m asleep
Five cycles taken straight after clocking off, laid on an ordinary clock face.
Sleeping before the shift
The same sum run the other way: be up at 8:30 pm, which is an hour and a half before you are due on, and count whole cycles back from there.
| In bed | Cycles | Time asleep |
|---|---|---|
| 12:45 pm | 5 cycles | 7h 30m |
| 2:15 pm | 4 cycles | 6h |
| 3:45 pm | 3 cycles | 4h 30m |
| 5:15 pm | 2 cycles | 3h |
Splitting it in two
One block after clocking off and a second before clocking on. If the two will not fit between the shifts, the total below says so.
Both blocks together
7h 30m
In bed at 7:00 am until 11:45 am, then again at 5:15 pm until 8:30 pm, with 5h 30m awake in between.
Those two do not fit between one shift and the next. Take fewer cycles in one of them.
The night shift across the year
Clocking on at 10:00 pm is dark on every day of the year in London, New York, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Sydney. London has the latest sunset of the five: 9:22 pm, in late June. None of the others gets past 8:31 pm.
Clocking off at 6:00 am is another matter. These are 2026's dates. In London the finish is in daylight from about 23 March. The clocks go forward on the 29th and put it back in the dark for three weeks. From about 19 April to 24 August it is light again. New York has light finishes from late April to early August. Johannesburg has them from late September to the end of February, and Cape Town from about 20 October to 25 January. Sydney gets three weeks of them from the middle of September, until its clocks go forward on 4 October. Then they return from the end of October to the middle of January.
Five cycles straight after the shift means in bed at 7:00 am and up at 2:45 pm. In Johannesburg that whole block is in daylight on every day of the year. The latest sunrise there is 6:56 am and the earliest sunset 5:23 pm. In Sydney it is daylight on all but about four weeks of the year. New York has it on about 260 days, London on about 230 and Cape Town on about 210. The dark mornings fall in each city's winter and in the weeks either side of a clock change.
The shift runs through the hour the clocks change, in every city here that changes them. On the night they go forward it is seven hours long. On the night they go back it is nine. In 2026 those nights are 29 March and 25 October in London, 8 March and 1 November in New York, and 4 October and 5 April in Sydney. Johannesburg and Cape Town keep one clock all year, so there every night shift is eight hours.
Sleeping before the shift instead, five cycles run from 12:45 pm to an 8:30 pm alarm, an hour and a half before clocking on. That alarm goes off in daylight in London from early May to the middle of August. In New York it does so only from about 20 June to 6 July. In Johannesburg, Cape Town and Sydney it is dark by then all year.
Sunrise and sunset: the NOAA solar equations, for each city centre in 2026, to the nearest minute.
Cycles are 90 minutes here and dropping off takes 15, as on the rest of the site, and the next shift is taken to start at the same time the following day. Rows that will not fit between two shifts are marked. That is the only judgement on the page: which arrangement suits your rota and your household is not something this site can know.
The other rotas
A run of days and nights together, with the switch days between them, is laid out on the rota planner.
- Twelve-hour nights
7:00 pm to 7:00 am
- Earlies
6:00 am to 2:00 pm
- Lates
2:00 pm to 10:00 pm
- Twelve-hour days
7:00 am to 7:00 pm