The honest answer is that the best reading hour is not morning or evening or lunch — it is whichever hour you can defend. The question is not really about scheduling at all. It is about deciding that reading matters enough to protect a block of time from everything else competing for it.
Most people who struggle with this are actually struggling with something deeper: the belief that reading is a luxury rather than a necessity. When you frame it as optional, it gets squeezed out by whatever feels more urgent. The shift happens when you start treating your reading hour the way you treat a meeting with someone important — you would not cancel it just because an email came in.
That said, there are practical considerations worth thinking through. Morning reading works well for people who wake before their household does, because the quiet is almost impossible to find later. The mind is fresh, distractions have not yet accumulated, and there is something grounding about starting the day with someone else's thinking before the world starts demanding yours. Dorie Clark writes about the importance of creating what she calls "white space" — unscheduled time where real thinking can happen. Early morning is natural white space for many people.
Evening reading has its own advantages, particularly if you read fiction or anything that helps you decompress. The transition from screen to page signals to your brain that the day is ending. Research on sleep hygiene consistently shows that reading physical books before bed improves sleep quality compared to scrolling a phone. If your goal is winding down, evening is hard to beat.
But here is what matters more than timing: anchoring. Behavioral research shows that new habits stick best when attached to existing ones. If you already drink coffee every morning at seven, your reading hour starts when you sit down with that coffee. If you already commute by train, that is your reading time. The anchor removes the daily decision of "when should I read today?" — a question that creates just enough friction to let you skip it.
There is also the question of energy. Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness talk about the mastery mindset — the idea of being fully present in whatever you are doing. If you are trying to read dense nonfiction when your brain is exhausted at ten at night, you are not really reading. You are scanning words while thinking about tomorrow. Match the difficulty of what you read to your energy level. Challenging material when you are sharp. Lighter reading when you are tired. Some people keep two books going for exactly this reason.
One practical approach: try reading at the same time for two weeks straight. Do not evaluate whether it is the "right" time until the two weeks are up. Most people abandon a reading time after three days because it felt awkward, not because it was genuinely wrong. Awkwardness is just unfamiliarity. The habit needs repetition before it starts feeling natural.
The real answer to "when is reading hour" is whenever you decide it is — and then show up for it consistently enough that the decision stops being a decision and becomes just what you do.