Daylight Hours in Hawaii
Hawaii is the closest the United States comes to the tropics and the only state that has never adopted daylight saving time, so Honolulu keeps one clock all year and its longest and shortest days differ by less than any other state in the country.
Honolulu is losing about 8 minutes of daylight a weekToday in Honolulu, and today where you are
Hawaii Standard Time year round time, 21.3 degrees northEvery figure on this page is computed for Honolulu, the largest city in Hawaii at the 2020 census. That is a real answer for a lot of the state and the wrong answer for the rest of it, so the box below gives you your own.
Today in Honolulu
October 19
- Civil twilight begins6:06 AM
- Sunrise6:29 AM
- Solar noon12:16 PM
- Sunset6:04 PM
- Civil twilight ends6:26 PM
- Daylight11h 35m
Reading the U.S. Naval Observatory for this point. The times above are this site’s own calculation until it answers.
These times assume a flat, unobstructed horizon. USNO puts it this way: “Sunrise and sunset conventionally refer to the times when the upper edge of the disk of the Sun is on the horizon, considered unobstructed relative to the location of interest.” A ridge, a hill or a building to your west will end your afternoon earlier than any published time, sometimes by twenty minutes or more, and no sunset table anywhere can tell you by how much.
Check this point and date at U.S. Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Department
Hawaii’s daylight year
- Longest day13h 26mJune 20
- Shortest day10h 50mDecember 21
- Difference across the year2h 36mset by Honolulu's latitude of 21.3 degrees north
- Earliest sunset5:48 PMNovember 26, not the shortest day
- Sun against the clock31 min lateHonolulu sits 8 degrees west of the Hawaii Standard Time year round time meridian
- Longest day June 20
- Shortest day December 21
- Earliest sunset November 26
- Latest sunrise January 16
Honolulu runs from 13h 26m of daylight on June 20 down to 10h 50m on December 21, a difference of 2h 36m across the year. That single number is almost entirely a latitude fact, and it puts Hawaii 50th of the fifty states for how much its day length moves.
The curve above is drawn from a real day by day calculation rather than from a smooth wave, which is why the two most useful marks on it are not where people expect. The earliest sunset falls on November 26, roughly two weeks before the shortest day, and the latest sunrise on January 16, roughly two weeks after it. Solar noon drifts later through the winter, which drags the whole day later against the clock while the day itself is still shortening. The evening end loses that race first and wins it back first, so the afternoons start drawing out well before the solstice while the mornings keep getting darker.
Hawaii daylight milestones in 2026
Next up in Honolulu: Earliest sunset on November 26.
- January 16
Latest sunrise
Sunrise 7:12 AM · Sunset 6:11 PM · 10h 59m of daylight
In the new year, not in December, and for the mirror image of the reason the earliest sunset came early.
- March 14
Days pass twelve hours
Sunrise 6:41 AM · Sunset 6:41 PM · 12h 00m of daylight
A few days before the spring equinox rather than on it, because sunrise and sunset are measured at the sun's upper edge and the atmosphere bends the light.
- May 9
First 7 PM sunset
Sunrise 5:56 AM · Sunset 7:00 PM · 13h 04m of daylight
The evening most people actually notice, and the reason the clock change lands when it does.
- June 20
Longest day
Sunrise 5:50 AM · Sunset 7:16 PM · 13h 26m of daylight
The June solstice. The sun stands at its highest and the year turns around.
- August 16
Last 7 PM sunset
Sunrise 6:10 AM · Sunset 7:01 PM · 12h 51m of daylight
The end of the long evenings, usually weeks before anyone starts mentioning it.
- September 27
Days fall under twelve hours
Sunrise 6:22 AM · Sunset 6:23 PM · 12h 01m of daylight
A few days after the September equinox, for the same reason the spring crossing came early.
- November 26
Earliest sunset
Sunrise 6:49 AM · Sunset 5:48 PM · 10h 59m of daylight
Not the shortest day. It arrives about two weeks early, because solar noon is still drifting later at the same time the day is still shortening.
- December 21
Shortest day
Sunrise 7:05 AM · Sunset 5:55 PM · 10h 50m of daylight
The December solstice, and the only milestone here that is about the length of the day rather than the position of one end of it.
What does not happen in Hawaii
Hawaii does not observe daylight saving time, so its clocks never change and the two biggest jumps in the daylight year simply do not happen here.
The sun never sets before 5 PM in Honolulu, which is why winter afternoons here keep their shape.
Hawaii and its time zone
A time zone is an hour of real solar time wide, so two places on the same clock can be nearly an hour apart in what the sun is actually doing. Honolulu sits 8 degrees west of the meridian Hawaii Standard Time year round time is built around, which puts solar noon about 31 minutes after clock noon and shifts every sunrise and sunset in Hawaii later than the same latitude would give on the eastern side of the zone. Hawaii does not move its clocks at all, so this offset is the whole story here and it is the same in July as in January.
On the longest day of 2026, the sun sets about 22 minutes later at Hawaii’s western edge than at its eastern one, on the same clock, because the state is about 5.5 degrees of longitude wide. North to south the difference is one of length rather than clock time, worth about 13 minutes of daylight across the state’s 3.3 degrees of latitude.
Both of those figures are the spread across Hawaii, not an error bar on Honolulu. For an exact answer at an exact place, the ZIP box near the top of this page takes any US ZIP code.
U.S. Naval Observatory, Rise, Set, and Twilight Definitions“Civil twilight begins in the morning, and ends in the evening, when the center of the Sun is geometrically 6 degrees below the horizon. This is the limit at which twilight illumination is sufficient, under good weather conditions, for terrestrial objects to be clearly distinguished.”
Civil twilight is the reason a sunset time is not the same as the end of the day. In Honolulu on the longest day of the year the sun sets at 7:16 PM and civil twilight runs on until 7:41 PM, another 25 minutes of usable light. On the shortest day the same gap is only 24 minutes, because the sun is dropping toward the horizon at a steeper angle in winter than in summer.
The states with the biggest daylight years
| State | Reference city | Longest | Shortest | Change across the year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska | Anchorage | 19h 23m | 5h 27m | 13h 56m |
| Washington | Seattle | 15h 59m | 8h 25m | 7h 34m |
| North Dakota | Fargo | 15h 52m | 8h 31m | 7h 21m |
| Montana | Billings | 15h 44m | 8h 40m | 7h 04m |
| Oregon | Portland | 15h 41m | 8h 42m | 6h 59m |
| Minnesota | Minneapolis | 15h 37m | 8h 46m | 6h 51m |
| Vermont | Burlington | 15h 33m | 8h 50m | 6h 43m |
| Idaho | Boise | 15h 27m | 8h 56m | 6h 31m |
| Maine | Portland | 15h 26m | 8h 56m | 6h 30m |
| South Dakota | Sioux Falls | 15h 26m | 8h 56m | 6h 30m |
| Wisconsin | Milwaukee | 15h 23m | 9h 00m | 6h 23m |
| New Hampshire | Manchester | 15h 22m | 9h 00m | 6h 22m |
Ranked by how much each state’s day length changes between its longest and shortest day, at the state’s largest city. Hawaii is 50 of 50 on that measure.
Hawaii daylight FAQ
The rest of the Hawaii sky
Daylight hours in nearby states
Every time on this page is computed from the published NOAA solar position equations and reconciled against the U.S. Naval Observatory, which is the reference this site defers to: across 343 USNO days at stations from Miami to Utqiagvik, every sunrise, sunset and civil twilight time agrees to within one minute and most agree exactly. Time zone boundaries and the daylight saving dates are statutory, from 49 CFR part 71 and 15 U.S.C. 260a. Daylight hours by state.