Should You Shower In The Morning Or At Night?

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Your morning routine is what starts off your day, so everything hinges on it. One of the big questions that many adults face regarding their morning routine is the issue of when to shower. What’s best for you depends on your routines, your preferences and even your body’s natural rhythms.

Showering In the Morning: Pros and Cons

Showering in the morning gives you a nice blast of energy, and can even be used to replace coffee if you’re trying to cut back. Of course, for many people the biggest draw back to showering in the morning is that extra spent getting ready means less time sleeping. On the flip side, others prefer morning showers because they start off each work day looking fresh, new and fully prepared. Morning showering can result in easier to style hair that looks great, even if it takes extra time.

Showering At Night: Pros and Cons

For many, the greatest advantage of night time showers is the time it saves getting ready in the mornings. It’s also a great way to relax after a long, hard day at work. If you have a family with small children, night time showers also present a small way to get a short break from the chaos in your home.

Lesser Known Considerations

This article in Men’s Health magazine cites the American Journal of Biology as claiming that showering at night can disrupt your sleep schedule by changing your body temperature and throwing off your natural rhythms. However, this same article also raises an excellent point in favor of showering at night: going to bed without showering can soil your sheets faster, and may lead to excessive body oils and odor in your sheets and on your body.

One more thing you never considered: this informative article from WTOP in Washington points out that showering in the morning rinses away toxins that your body produces and releases at night while you sleep–meaning showering in the morning can make you look and feel even more refreshed than you might realize.

To sum up, if you’re an insomniac, showering at night may keep you awake. If you have excessive body oils or odors, showering in the morning may actually exacerbate the issue.

Which One Is Right For You?

People who like to shower at night often have jobs that require them to wake very early in the morning. Showering in the evening is also the preferred method of many parents who need to see their children to school in the morning, and who wish to cut back on their own responsibilities after they wake up. Showering at night is a good idea if you’re not a morning person and you want to do as little as possible in the morning, or if you have too many morning responsibilities already and don’t want to add to the chaos.

Many people who like to shower in the early morning are professionals who place a premium on personal appearance, while others who choose to shower in the morning like the jolt of the water to wake them up.

Making It Work

Maybe you’ve already decided you want to shower at night, but you don’t like the bed-head look. Or maybe you want to shower in the morning, but you want to sleep in, as well. Here are a few tips to make your preferred method work for you:

Showering at Night

• Pin up your hair. If you’re a woman who would like to shower at night and wake up with bouncy, beautiful hair in the morning, consider sleeping with a high bun up on your head. Hours before bedtime, shower and then let your hair become semi-dry. Run some styling gel through your hair, then pin it high on your head in a bun. You’ll wake up in the morning with fuller, more manageable hair. Tighter buns lead to curls, and looser buns lead to wavy, full-bodied hair.
• Shower at least two hours before bed time. Wet hair is more likely to dry in weird, crazy directions. Let your hair get dry before you go to bed.

Showering in the Morning

• Cut back time in your morning routine, so you can shower AND sleep in. If a shower in the morning is important to you, but sleeping in is important as well, then find ways to make your morning more efficient.
  • put coffee in the coffee maker ahead of time
  • choose your clothes the evening before
  • put out your wallet or purse by the door, where you’ll see them as you’re walking out on the way to work
  • make your lunch at night before you go to sleep
• Establish a routine, and stick with it. By doing the same things day after day, you become more efficient and find little ways to improve your time.