Denver's elevation and terrain make golden hour tricky and beautiful — peaks catch alpenglow after the valley goes dim. Use the times here as your baseline, then add the ridge line between you and the sun. The times below are computed live for Denver's exact coordinates and update automatically for any date you pick.
The month-by-month table below is in this city's own local time. The live times above follow your device's timezone. Mountains, ridgelines and buildings can shorten the usable window — scout your horizon.
Local golden hour spot: Sloan's Lake with the skyline and Rockies. Arrive 30 minutes before the window opens to set up, and keep shooting into blue hour — it's shorter than you think.
Golden hour in Denver is the hour before sunset — and sunset here runs from 4:35 PM in December to 8:32 PM in June. The table below gives the exact window for every month, in Denver's own time zone.
Use the live times above for today's exact window. As a rule, evening golden hour in Denver starts about 40 minutes before sunset and ends at sunset. In June that is 7:49 PM – 8:29 PM; in December it is 3:53 PM – 4:36 PM.
Sunset in Denver is earliest at 4:35 PM on December 1 and latest at 8:32 PM on June 25, a swing of about 4 hours across the year.
Golden hour lasts about 40 minutes in midsummer and 43 minutes in midwinter. The longest evening golden hour falls in December at about 43 minutes; the shortest is in March at about 36 minutes.
| Month | Sunrise | Sunset | Golden hour (evening) | Length | Daylight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 7:19 AM | 5:00 PM | 4:18 PM – 5:00 PM | 42 min | 9h 41m |
| February | 6:52 AM | 5:36 PM | 4:58 PM – 5:36 PM | 38 min | 10h 44m |
| March | 7:11 AM | 7:07 PM | 6:31 PM – 7:07 PM | 36 min | 11h 56m |
| April | 6:22 AM | 7:38 PM | 7:02 PM – 7:38 PM | 36 min | 13h 16m |
| May | 5:45 AM | 8:07 PM | 7:29 PM – 8:07 PM | 38 min | 14h 23m |
| June | 5:31 AM | 8:29 PM | 7:49 PM – 8:29 PM | 40 min | 14h 58m |
| July | 5:44 AM | 8:26 PM | 7:47 PM – 8:26 PM | 39 min | 14h 42m |
| August | 6:12 AM | 7:55 PM | 7:19 PM – 7:55 PM | 36 min | 13h 44m |
| September | 6:41 AM | 7:08 PM | 6:32 PM – 7:08 PM | 36 min | 12h 27m |
| October | 7:10 AM | 6:20 PM | 5:43 PM – 6:20 PM | 37 min | 11h 10m |
| November | 6:44 AM | 4:44 PM | 4:04 PM – 4:44 PM | 40 min | 9h 59m |
| December | 7:13 AM | 4:36 PM | 3:53 PM – 4:36 PM | 43 min | 9h 22m |
Golden hour is the stretch just after sunrise and just before sunset, when the low sun turns hard daylight into soft, warm, directional light — the most flattering natural light for portraits, real estate, product and landscape photography. Blue hour follows sunset (and precedes sunrise): a short window of deep, even blue that's ideal for twilight real estate shots and skylines. Both windows change with latitude and season, which is why this page computes them live instead of guessing.
Kanyon Studio is a San Diego photography and video studio — golden hour is our home field. Brand shoots, products, real estate and portraits, planned around exactly this light.
