How many minutes are in a day?

1,440 minutes

A day is 24 hours and an hour is 60 minutes, so:

24 × 60 = 1,440 minutes, and 1,440 × 60 = 86,400 seconds

The converter above starts at 1 day and shows hours and seconds beside the minutes; enter 2.5 days, or any number, to convert it. To work with hours and minutes of the clock, use the time calculator.

Days that are not 1,440 minutes

Where daylight saving time is observed, two days a year are a different length. On the second Sunday in March, clocks jump from 2:00 to 3:00 a.m., so that day has 23 hours, or 1,380 minutes. On the first Sunday in November, clocks fall back from 2:00 to 1:00 a.m., and the day has 25 hours, or 1,500 minutes. A night shift that crosses either change is an hour shorter or longer than the clock times suggest — the time duration calculator handles that when you choose a time zone.

Minutes in longer periods

Using minutes to plan a day

Minutes make small habits visible. Fifteen minutes a day is about 1% of the day’s 1,440 minutes, and over a year it adds up to more than 91 hours — two full work weeks. An 8-hour night of sleep takes 480 minutes, a third of the day, which leaves 960 waking minutes. Schedules for classes, meetings and shift work are often written in minutes for the same reason: they divide evenly into hours (15, 30, 45, 60) and add up without carrying. Converting the other way, divide minutes by 60 for hours and by 1,440 for days: 2,000 minutes is 33 hours 20 minutes, or 1.39 days.

Minute of the day

Counting minutes from midnight is a simple way to compare times: 9:00 a.m. is minute 540, 2:30 p.m. is minute 870 (14 × 60 + 30), and 11:59 p.m. is minute 1,439. Subtract two such numbers to get the length of a shift in minutes, then divide by 60 for hours: from minute 540 to minute 1,020 (5:00 p.m.) is 480 minutes, or 8 hours. Military time makes the first step easier because 14:30 already gives the hour on a 24-hour clock; see military time. For a timesheet with several shifts, the hours calculator adds them up.