The clocks go back on 25 October. Here is what it actually does to a parent living alone.

Every year around this time the same advice goes round. Put a lamp on the landing. Tape down the rug. Check the bulbs. It is not wrong, and it is not where the evidence points.

The research on falls and winter is better than the advice built on it, and it says something more specific and more useful: the season does raise the risk, but it raises it outside the house rather than inside it, and it does most of its damage through what an older person stops doing rather than what they trip over.

That changes what is worth doing about it.

First, the hour itself

Summer time ends at 02:00 on Sunday 25 October 2026. Clocks go back one hour. Sunset in Dublin moves like this:

Sunset in Dublin city, calculated

Date	Sunset
Today, 21 September	19:29
Saturday 24 October	18:11
Sunday 25 October	17:09
Wednesday 25 November	16:17
Monday 21 December	16:09

Between now and midwinter the evening loses three hours and twenty minutes. An hour of it goes in a single night.

For most of us that is an inconvenience. For someone who is a bit unsteady, who has stopped driving, and whose day is built around a walk to the shop or a lift to the church, it removes the part of the day they were using.

What the evidence actually says

A systematic review published in Working with Older People in 2025 pulled together twelve studies on falls and the seasons. Nine found more falls in winter and the weeks leading up to it. One, from Korea, found the opposite. Two found no link at all.

So the effect is real but it is not overwhelming, and anyone who tells you winter doubles the risk is going beyond what has been measured. The review's own conclusion is careful: winter, and the run-up to it, appears to carry an increased risk.

Read that twice, because it inverts the usual advice. The rug in the hall is as dangerous in June as it is in January. What changes in winter is the path to the front gate, the step at the church door, the wet leaves on the footpath and the walk back from the bus in the dark.

The second mechanism: what stops happening

The review points at something less obvious than ice. When the evenings close in, older people go out less. Less walking means less muscle, and less muscle means a worse outcome the next time somebody stumbles. It is a slow effect and it does not announce itself.

The same review notes two other things worth knowing. Vitamin D runs at its lowest in winter, about 15% below the summer peak, which matters for bone and for muscle. And across the studies, early winter mornings came up repeatedly as the peak time for falls, not the evenings everybody worries about.

So the picture is: a person who goes out less, gets weaker over a few months, and is at their most vulnerable first thing on a cold morning. That is not a rug problem.

Where Ireland sits

The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing at Trinity published the DEFINED study in BMJ Open in February 2026. Among people aged 70 and over living in their own homes:

The researchers add the line that matters most for the next few months: without intervention, somebody who falls once is at significantly higher risk of falling again. The first fall is the warning, and winter is when it tends to be ignored, because a slip on a wet path in November reads as bad luck rather than as information.

What is actually worth doing before 25 October

Given where the evidence points, the useful list is shorter and different from the usual one.

Protect the outside, not just the inside

• Light the path, the gate and the doorstep, not just the hall. This is the one piece of conventional advice the evidence fully supports, because outdoors is where the seasonal risk lives.
• Clear the leaves and check the gutters now. Wet leaves on a path are the Irish equivalent of ice, and they arrive weeks before the frost does.
• Look at the shoes. Worn soles and slippers outdoors are quietly responsible for a great deal.

Protect the routine

• Move the outing earlier rather than dropping it. The shop at two o'clock instead of four keeps the walk in the day. Losing the walk is the expensive part.
• Keep one fixed thing each week that gets them out of the house. A lift to Mass, bowls, the day centre, a grandchild collected from school. The routine is doing more work than any handrail.
• Ask the GP about vitamin D, particularly if they are indoors most of the day. It is a short conversation and an inexpensive one.

Pay attention to mornings

• Heat the house before they get up, not after. Cold stiffens people, and the evidence puts the peak in the early morning.
• Do not let them rush the first ten minutes. Blood pressure takes a moment to catch up on standing, and that is a common mechanism behind a morning fall.
• Look at the medicines. TILDA found more than one in four older people taking a medication that increases fall risk, and more than one in seven taking two or more. A pharmacist will review them for nothing.

The thing the dark really takes away

There is a practical problem underneath all of this that lighting does not solve. From late October, the hours between four in the afternoon and nine in the morning are dark, and for somebody living alone that is seventeen hours in which nobody knows how the evening went.

Families fill that gap with phone calls, and a phone call asks somebody to report on themselves. Anyone who has rung a parent knows the answer is "grand". A fall at nine in the evening is frequently not mentioned at nine the next morning, either because it seemed minor or because mentioning it invites a conversation about moving.

Whatever closes that gap in your family is what matters here, and it is not necessarily a product. A neighbour with a key and a reason to knock does it. A rota where somebody different calls each evening does it. A daily habit, like the curtains being open by nine, does it, because the absence of the signal is the signal.

For families who want it done without anyone having to remember, that is the work SmartGuardian does: a sensor in the room reports movement, time in bed, trips to the bathroom overnight, and raises an alert if somebody falls, with nothing to wear and nothing to press. What a change means is still a judgement for the family, with a GP where that is the right call.

But the honest answer to "what should I do before the clocks go back" is simpler than any of that. Light the path. Keep the walk in the day. Ask about the stumbles. And notice that if the evening routine quietly disappears in November, it is unlikely to come back on its own in February.

Related reading

If a fall has already happened, planning a safe return home is the next thing to read. If you are weighing up whether it is time to do something at all, the early signs a parent is struggling covers what to look for. And if the worry is specifically about night-time, night-time wandering and staying safe at home goes into it properly.

Sources

Sunset times calculated for Dublin city centre (53.35°N, 6.26°W) using the standard solar position method, and checked against the solstices. Seasonal falls evidence: Byrne et al., “What is the impact of seasonal ambient changes on the incidence of falls among older adults?”, Working with Older People, 2025. Indoor and outdoor split: Moreland et al., “Seasonal variation in fall-related emergency department visits by location of fall, United States, 2015”, Journal of Safety Research, 2021. Irish figures: The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), the DEFINED study, BMJ Open, 11 February 2026. This guide is general information and is not medical advice. For any health concern, involve a GP or the relevant services.