Yes, you can drive at night with a permit in Maryland. No curfew at the permit stage. Maryland requires 10 supervised night hours out of 60 total, and night is defined as sunset to sunrise. That’s the standard setup. What’s not standard is the permit age: Maryland requires teens to be at least 15 years and 9 months old before they can apply. Not a round number. Not “15 and a half.” Fifteen years and nine months specifically.

When Does “Night” Start in Maryland?

Maryland’s night window is tied to the sun, not the clock. Sunset to sunrise, every day, shifting by a minute or two as the year moves forward.

In Baltimore, sunset is around 4:45 PM in December and extends to roughly 8:35 PM in late June. That’s a nearly 4-hour shift across the year. A 5 PM drive in January is night. That same drive in July? Still daytime with hours to spare.

The practical implication: you can’t memorize a single “night starts at X” rule. The window changes daily. Someone logging hours in January and again in April will find the same time of evening behaves differently depending on the month.

Curfew Rules

Maryland has no permit curfew. Permit holders can drive at any hour with a licensed supervisor present. The supervisor must be at least 21 and hold a valid license.

Curfew rules in Maryland apply to provisional license holders (the stage after the permit), not to permit-stage teens. So at the permit stage, the only restriction is: supervisor in the car, always.

Getting Your 10 Night Hours Done

60 hours over a 9-month hold period works out to about 1.7 hours of supervised driving per week. That’s manageable: less than a 30-minute drive three times a week gets you there. The 9-month hold gives you more runway than the typical 6-month requirement in other states.

For night hours specifically, 10 across 9 months is roughly 1.1 hours per month. That’s one meaningful night session every few weeks.

Still, don’t trickle it out that slowly. Night driving is a skill that gets better with repetition. Better to do 2 to 3 solid night sessions per month than one scattered hour every 5 weeks.

Things that work:

December and January are easy. Baltimore sunset before 5 PM means after-school drives routinely land in night territory. If your teen is starting their permit year in fall, bank as many night hours as you can before the days start getting longer in late January.
Mix conditions. One clear night, one overcast night, one night in light rain. Each is a different experience. Maryland’s weather is variable enough that you’ll probably get all three without planning for it.
Plan around the 9-month hold, not just the 60 hours. You can’t get the provisional license until both the hours and the hold period are satisfied. Finishing the 60 hours at month five doesn’t accelerate anything.

Maryland Permit Requirements

Requirement	Details
Total supervised hours	60
Night hours	10
Night definition	Sunset to sunrise
Permit curfew	None
Minimum permit age	15 years, 9 months
Permit hold period	9 months
Supervisor minimum age	21
Driver’s ed required	Yes

Practical Tips

The 15-years-9-months rule has a real effect on timelines. A teenager who turns 15 in September can’t even apply for a permit until the following June. If they want their provisional license at 16 and a half, they need their permit by around September of that year. Map out the calendar early.

Sunset shifts even within the DMV area. Hagerstown and Ocean City are both in Maryland. They’re about 200 miles apart and their sunsets differ by a few minutes. For most families the difference is negligible, but if you’re logging a drive right around sunset time, the exact location matters.

Don’t guess on sunset. The most common logging error is marking a session as night when it started before sunset. You might be driving in dimming light that feels like night, but if the sun hasn’t technically set, it’s a day hour. Check the actual time before each session, not your gut.

60 hours is serious. At 1.7 hours per week you’re at the minimum. Build in a buffer: unexpected weeks will happen where you can’t drive at all.

Moda looks up sunset and sunrise for your GPS location before every session and automatically categorizes each drive. Your log is accurate from drive one, not reconstructed from memory at the end.

For full Maryland permit requirements, see our Maryland permit hours guide.

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