Do bearded dragons need light at night [Detailed Guide]

Do bearded dragons need light at night? Or is it best to turn all lights off during night hours? In this article, we will talk about the natural day and night cycle that bearded dragons experience in the wild, and how to safely mimic that at home. Whether or not you use supplemental heat at night for your bearded dragon will depend on your indoor climate.

Now people ask me a question lot of times “Should I leave my bearded dragon’s lights on all the time?” Now to answer that question, I’m just gonna ask you a question. How would you like to go to bed at night, lay down on your bed, and try to go to sleep with the lights on in the room? Probably it’s not gonna be conductive to a good night’s sleep.

Your bearded dragons are the same way. It’s gonna need both a daytime and a nighttime. So for that reason, we say, no, shut those lights off at night, and allow your dragon to have a period of time where he can sleep in darkness.

After all, it is the most natural way that bearded dragons are gonna have in the wild. They’re not gonna have sunlight 24 hours a day, so in captivity, we want to give them nighttime as well.

Night time temp for bearded dragon

Now, one of the questions people ask about that is, “Well what about the temperature? If the lights go out, the temperature is gonna drop. Is that gonna have an ill effect?”

I’m just gonna simply ask you this: How cool does your house drop at night? If the temperature drops below 70 degrees, you may want to consider some supplemental heat.

However, one fact about bearded dragons that works in our favor is it they warm up very very quickly and they cool down very slowly. With that said, as long as your dragons are allowed to thermoregulate and bask during the daytime, their body will hold sufficient heat to carry them throughout the night, so long as your temperature doesn’t drop down really really cold.

If your temperature stays at 70 degrees or above, the use of supplemental heat is pretty much a mood point. You don’t really need it. In fact, we have never used any kind of supplemental heat with our bearded dragons at nighttime, and our temperatures usually stay around 70 degrees Fahrenheit at night.

However, if your house is cold and drafty, you might want to consider the use of nighttime supplemental heat. There are a couple of things that people use for that.

Also, read What to feed a bearded dragon [Easy Guide].

Things or light to use to keep your bearded dragons warm at night

1. Use a Blacklight bulb for Bearded dragons at night

Number one is a black bulb that actually screws into the socket just like a standard incandescent bulb. It produces heat but it doesn’t produce light, therefore allowing your bearded dragon to have a little extra heat at night.

2. Ceramic heat emitter

The other thing that people use this called a ceramic heat emitter. Basically, it screws into a socket just like a light bulb, but it doesn’t produce any light. It’s made of ceramic and it just produces a little extra heat for your dragon.

Now, you want to be careful with those because some of those heat emitters can get really really hot, and you can allow your dragon to be as warm at night as they are during the daytime, which is not good. They need to cool off a little bit during the nighttime in order to properly rest.

3. Under the tank heating pad

The other thing that some people have asked me about is the use of an under-the-tank heating pad, such as what a lot of people use with snakes. Personally, I’m not a big fan of those simply because most of those under the tank pads get really really hot, and I feel like, for an animal that’s used to basking with light coming from above, those things can get so hot that if you’re not careful they’re gonna burn the bearded dragon’s belly.

If you are gonna use one of those for supplemental nighttime heat, you might want to consider putting it on a thermostat, that way it doesn’t get so hot that the heat is so intense that it could cause damage to your dragon’s stomach if he or she chooses to lay on it at night.

So, guys, we hope that this has answered your questions concerning whether or not bearded dragons need light at night. By no means should you use light as in light like this? If you need to use supplemental heat, then do so with a product that doesn’t cause your dragon to not be able to have a day and night cycle.

Thank you guys for reading.