Wake at 2:00 pm

A 2:00 pm alarm after a night shift

An alarm at two in the afternoon is the shape sleep takes after a night shift. The table's bedtimes are 4:45 am, 6:15 am, 7:45 am and 9:15 am, all in the morning, and all after the time any country here changes its clocks, so the nights the clocks change make no difference to this page.

The four-cycle row, 7:45 am, fits a twelve-hour night that ends at 7:00 am, with three quarters of an hour to get home and into bed. The eight-hour night rota ends at 6:00 am, and at the planner's default of an hour to settle, its bed is at 7:00 am; with the quarter hour to fall asleep, four cycles from there wake at 1:15 pm and five at 2:45 pm, either side of this page.

Most of these bedtimes are in daylight. The 9:15 am row is after sunrise in all five cities on every day of the year. The 7:45 am row is before sunrise in London from early December to late January, and in Cape Town from early June to late July; elsewhere it is always light. The 6:15 am row is light in London from the middle of April to early September, in New York from the middle of April to late August, in Johannesburg from early September to the end of March, in Cape Town from early October to early February, and in Sydney for most of the southern spring and summer. The six-cycle row at 4:45 am is before sunrise almost everywhere, all year; only London, for about three weeks in June, has the sun up by then.

The alarm itself is in daylight in all five cities on every day of the year.

Further afield, the 7:45 am bedtime is before sunrise in Madrid for half the year: from early November to early March, for about a fortnight from the end of March, and from early September until the clocks go back in late October. Moscow has it dark from early November to the middle of February, and Berlin from late November to early February. The 4:45 am row is light in Moscow from early May to early August and in Tokyo from early May to late July, but never in Singapore, Dubai or Madrid.

Waking at 2:00 pm leaves five hours before a 7:00 pm start and eight before a 10:00 pm one. Five cycles from the eight-hour rota's 7:00 am bed ends at 2:45 pm, three quarters of an hour past this page, which still leaves seven and a quarter hours before the next 10:00 pm start. The six-cycle row, from 4:45 am, only fits a shift that has ended by 3:45 am, at the planner's default hour to settle. Across four nights in a row, four cycles a day comes to twenty-four hours asleep, and five cycles to thirty. On the night the clocks go forward, a night shift from 10:00 pm to 6:00 am lasts seven hours, and on the night they go back, nine. A twelve-hour night from 7:00 pm to 7:00 am becomes eleven or thirteen hours in the same way, wherever the clocks change at all; Johannesburg, Cape Town, Singapore, Tokyo, Dubai and Moscow keep one clock all year. In Singapore the 6:15 am row is before sunrise on every day of the year and the 7:45 am row after it, because sunrise there stays between 6:46 am and 7:17 am. In Madrid the 6:15 am row is dark all year too, since sunrise there never comes before 6:44 am.

Sunrise and sunset: the NOAA solar equations, for each city centre in 2026, to the nearest minute.

A quarter of an hour either way

If the alarm is set to something near but not exactly 2:00 pm, the table for it is a page of its own.

• 1:00 pm
• 1:15 pm
• 1:30 pm
• 1:45 pm
• 2:15 pm
• 2:30 pm
• 2:45 pm
• 3:00 pm

The other direction

Already in bed and deciding when to set the alarm? The sleep-now page runs the same sum forwards from the time where you are.