Oregon permit holders can drive at night with no curfew restriction. And the state requires 10 of your supervised hours happen after sunset. Night starts at sunset and ends at sunrise, which means the timing shifts every day of the year.

The bigger story in Oregon isn’t really the night hours. It’s the driver’s ed math.

What Oregon Calls “Night”

Oregon ties its night definition to actual sunset and sunrise times. No fixed clock. The sun drops below the horizon, night begins. This changes by location and by season.

In Portland, sunset lands around 4:30 PM in December and pushes past 9:00 PM in late June. A 7 PM drive in January counts as night. That same 7 PM drive in July counts as day. Paper logs can’t track this accurately without someone looking up sunset tables every single session. Most people don’t.

No Permit Curfew

Oregon doesn’t restrict when permit holders can drive. You can practice at 11 PM on a Tuesday if you have a licensed supervisor aged 21 or older in the passenger seat. There’s no nighttime window that’s off-limits.

That’s different from states like Oklahoma or Tennessee, where the night window doubles as a hard curfew. Oregon gives you the full 24 hours to work with.

Getting Your Night Hours Done

Oregon requires 10 night hours out of your total supervised time. The strategy depends entirely on what time of year you start.

Start in fall or winter and you’ll rack up night hours fast. A 5 PM drive home from anywhere in November is already after sunset in Portland. You can hit your 10 night hours without changing your schedule much at all. Just drive when you’d normally be driving.

Start in late spring or summer and night doesn’t arrive until 8:30 or 9 PM. You’ll need to plan specific late sessions to get the hours done before your 6-month hold period ends.

One night drive per week from month one. Do that and you’ll have your 10 hours complete well before you’re applying for the license.

Oregon also gets rain. Portland averages around 144 rainy days per year. You don’t need to seek out wet-weather practice — it’ll find you. But a supervisor comfortable with night driving in the rain is worth thinking about early.

The Driver’s Ed Calculation

Oregon’s driver’s ed incentive is one of the strongest in the country. Skip driver’s ed and you owe 100 hours of supervised practice. Complete driver’s ed and that drops to 50 hours.

That’s not a minor difference. That’s 50 extra hours you and your parents need to find time for. At an average of 1 hour per session, you’re adding 50 more sessions to your calendar. Most Oregon families do driver’s ed just on this math alone.

If you’re on the fence, do the driver’s ed.

Oregon Permit Requirements

Requirement	Details
Total supervised hours (with driver’s ed)	50
Total supervised hours (without driver’s ed)	100
Night hours required	10
Night definition	Sunset to sunrise
Permit curfew	None
Minimum permit age	15
Permit hold period	6 months
Supervisor minimum age	21
Driver’s ed required	No, but strongly incentivized

Practical Tips

Use winter to your advantage. If you have any flexibility on when to start the permit process, beginning in October or November means sunset arrives early and night hours pile up without extra effort.

Track sunset times per session, not by assumption. Portland’s sunset shifts by about 4 hours between December and June. What counted as night last month might not count this month.

Night highway practice matters. Oregon’s roads range from dense urban grids in Portland to stretches of open highway where night driving feels completely different. Get time on both.

If your supervisor is nervous about night driving, acknowledge it and work around it. Even 20 minutes of neighborhood driving after dark twice a week gets you 2.5 hours a month. At that pace, 10 hours takes about four months. Start early.

Tracking Your Hours

Oregon’s sunset-based definition means categorizing each session correctly requires knowing the exact sunset time for your GPS location on that specific date. Moda checks that automatically: start a session, drive, stop, and it logs whether that time was day or night based on where you actually were. Your log stays accurate without any manual lookup.

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

Download: Moda on the App Store

Stop manually tracking hours. Moda logs driving automatically.

Auto-detects night driving, exports DMV forms, and syncs across family phones.