21:30
Tell the neighbours
Knock, text, or tape a note to the stairwell door. Dark is better together.
Saturday 6 March 2027 · 22:00–23:00
Switch off.Look up.
For one hour, homes, shops and whole streets switch off together. Step outside and see what the sky looks like when nobody is lighting it.
Count me in14,206people are in · example
Why bother
For sixty minutes the sky gets its dark back. The Milky Way, if you are lucky. Orion over the rooftops. Neighbours on the pavement, phones in their pockets, saying nothing for once. It costs nothing, it needs no app, and it starts when you flip one switch.
60min
One hour, 22:00 to 23:00. Back to normal by bedtime.
20%
How bright participating councils keep their streetlights. Crossings and emergency lights stay at full.
10min
About how long your eyes need before the faint stars start to come out.
Saturday 6 March
How the hour goes
22:00
Lights down
Switch off everything you do not need: living room, porch, shop sign, the lot. Participating councils dim streetlights to 20%. Crossings, hospitals and emergency lights stay on.
22:10
Let your eyes settle
Phone away, torch off. It takes about ten minutes before the faint stars start to appear, and twenty before the sky looks properly full.
22:30
Find Orion, find the Plough
Orion is sinking in the south-west. The Plough climbs in the north-east. There is no moon to fight with: it is two days from new.
23:00
Lights up
Switch back on, say goodnight to the street, and go to bed a bit calmer than usual.
Your part
Pick your dark
- Lights off in every room you are not standing in. Close the curtains if the street is bright.
- Phone face down, screen on its lowest setting. A red torch if you need one.
- Step into the garden, onto the balcony or down to the pavement. Give your eyes ten minutes.
- Knock on one door. Dark is better with company.
- Ask facilities to switch off lobby, sign and car-park lighting that is not needed for safety.
- Screens off at 22:00 for anyone still in. Yes, really.
- Open late? Keep the entrance lit and turn the sign off.
- Tape a note to the door: “We are dark from 22:00 to 23:00. Look up.”
- Dim non-essential streetlights to 20% for the hour. Keep crossings, junctions and emergency lighting as normal.
- Switch off floodlights on monuments, bridges and empty pitches.
- Tell residents a week ahead, in plain words, and say what stays lit and why.
- Put a free star chart on the library counter.
Your building
Tap your lights off.
Every window you switch off here is a promise to switch off the real one on 6 March. Tap as many as you like, then count yourself in.
3of 30 lights off
Example page: nothing is sent or saved.
You are in
See you in the dark.
#14,207
Saturday 6 March, 22:00. Lights off, eyes up. Tell one neighbour. That is the whole job.
Example page: nothing is sent or saved.
Before you ask
Questions
Yes. Crossings, junctions, hospitals and emergency routes keep their normal lighting, and so should you if you drive or work nights. Stay on your own property or somewhere familiar, bring a torch and keep your phone for emergencies.
A little, for one hour. That is not the point. The point is to see the night sky, and to show councils that people want better night lighting every night, not just one Saturday.
Less light at night helps migrating birds, bats and insects. One hour is a start. The longer ask, for councils and building owners, is to shield lights and dim them after midnight, all year.
No banners, no marches, no petitions to sign. It is a quiet hour. Switch off, step outside, say hello to a neighbour, go back in.
Go anyway. Clouds that glow orange over a lit town turn properly dark when the lights go down, and that is a sight on its own. There is no rain date.