Turn outdoor lights on at sunset or up to half an hour after it, and turn them off at bedtime or at a set hour such as 11 p.m. In Nashville that puts the on-time anywhere from about 4:30 in the afternoon in early December to just after 8 in the evening in late June. A schedule tied to the sun handles that swing by itself. A schedule tied to a fixed clock time needs resetting several times a year, and the twice-yearly clock change knocks it off by a full hour.
Across 2026, Nashville's sunset moves by more than three and a half hours on the clock, from 4:32 PM in early December to 8:08 PM around the start of summer. A timer set for 6 p.m. in October comes on close to dusk. After the clocks fall back on November 1, 2026, sunset that evening is 4:51 PM, so the same 6 p.m. setting leaves the yard dark for more than an hour. In mid-June the same setting lights the porch about two hours before the sun goes down.
Sunset and dusk by month: 2026 sunset, end of civil twilight and sunrise for downtown Nashville, from US Naval Observatory tables, with notes on 2027 and on how much the times shift across the metro.
Clock changes and your timers: the 2026 and 2027 dates, what each kind of timer does when the clocks move, and a short checklist for spring and fall.
Schedule recipes: on and off times you can copy for a porch, an everyday roofline, the holiday season, a storefront and a house left empty for a trip.
After a storm or outage: which timers forget their settings when the power drops, and how to check them once it is back.
Every time on this site is Central time as a Nashville wall clock shows it, with daylight saving time applied on the days it is in effect. Times are rounded to the minute and calculated for a level horizon. A house in a hollow, behind a ridge or under tall trees loses direct light earlier than the list says. Treat each time as a close guide for that date, not an exact appointment.
Anyone with a light outside: a porch lantern on a plug-in timer, a dusk-to-dawn bulb, a smart bulb run from a phone, landscape lights on a transformer, or a full roofline system. Nothing here depends on a brand or a product.
This reference is kept up by Permanent Lighting Solutions. Permanent Lighting Solutions is a veteran-owned installer of permanent roofline LED lighting in Nashville and Middle Tennessee.