The days are starting to get a little bit cooler, which means daylight saving time will soon be ending in the jurisdictions that observe it.
But there are still two weeks until the clocks change.
When does daylight saving time end?
On Sunday, April 6.
Clocks will be turned back by one hour at 3am AEDT — they’ll go to 2am.
Are the clocks going forwards or backwards?
Backwards.
Most digital clocks will automatically go backwards by one hour.
But you may have to manually change the time on things like oven clocks or your microwave.
And you’ll obviously have to change the time on analogue clocks and watches.
Will that mean more sleep or less sleep?
People in the jurisdictions that observe daylight saving time will feel like they’ve gained an extra hour.
And many people will use this “bonus time” to get an extra hour’s worth of sleep because the change happens in the early hours of Sunday morning when a lot of people are counting sheep.
But there’s nothing stopping you from using that hour to bake a batch of biscuits or go out for a walk in the crisp morning air.
Why does daylight saving time end on April 6?
Because daylight saving time ends on the first Sunday in April every year in Australian jurisdictions that observe daylight saving time.
And this year, that falls on April 6.
Daylight saving time starts each year on the first Sunday of October.
So the date will change each year, but it’ll always be on a Sunday.
The legislation doesn’t explicitly spell out why the change always happens on a Sunday.
However, the assumption is that lining it up with a weekend is less disruptive for schools and businesses that operate on a Monday-to-Friday basis.
Obviously, this doesn’t take into account people who work weekends and have shifts that don’t align with business hours.
It’s equally tricky to find an explicit reason for the April end date and October start date — but it’s generally about the amount of sunlight jurisdictions get.
In the NSW legislation, for example, daylight saving time is referred to as “summer time period”.
And the equivalent legislation for Victoria is actually called the Summer Time Act.
So people associate daylight saving time with summer and, as winter is summer’s opposite season, they may think of the months when daylight saving time doesn’t apply as winter time.
But that doesn’t line up with the meteorological seasons of the year.
Generally speaking, most of the country observes four seasons — summer, autumn, winter and spring — which each run for three months (the northern parts of the country observe the wet season and dry season).
In these areas the seasons start on the first day of a month:
- Summer: December 1
- Autumn: March 1
- Winter: June 1
- Spring: September 1
And this can create confusion because daylight saving time applies even when Australians are in autumn.
On the flip side, people can be experiencing the warmth of spring before daylight saving time has kicked in.
Is daylight saving time different in other countries?
Yep.
That’s why if you search for “when does daylight savings end?” in a search engine, you might be given a different date.
In the US, daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday of March — which was March 9 this year — and ends on the first Sunday of November.
And it’s different again in the UK.
Daylight saving time there kicks in on the last Sunday of March and ends on the last Sunday in October.
When does daylight saving time start back up again?
In the Australian jurisdictions that observe it, daylight saving time starts on the first Sunday of October every year.
In 2025, that’ll be October 5.
Which states observe daylight saving time?
- ACT
- NSW
- South Australia
- Tasmania
- Victoria
Which states don’t observe daylight saving time?
- Northern Territory
- Queensland
- Western Australia
Is it ‘daylight savings’ or ‘daylight saving’?
Technically, it’s called daylight saving time — without an “s” at the end of “saving”.
So that’s the way we refer to it in ABC articles.
But, conversationally, a lot of people drop the “time” and add an “s” to refer to it as “daylight savings” instead.
It’s a really common way to refer to it — which you can see for yourself when you compare the two terms in Google Trends.
The graph below shows how often people searched for “daylight savings” and “daylight saving” in Google over the past year.
The red line is the technically correct terminology — which you can see is used much less frequently than the conversational phrasing, which is represented by the blue line.
And the yellow line — which you can see barely makes an appearance — is using the correct terminology “daylight saving time”:
So if you say “daylight savings”, you’re not alone.
Those peaks in the lines represent spikes in search activity for the terms — which happen in the weeks leading up to daylight saving time starting and ending.
