By Dr. Melisa Arias-Valenzuela, C. Psych.
The leaves are changing. The days are getting shorter. The sun seems to be clocking out suspiciously early.
For some people, autumn brings an immediate urge to light a candle, make soup, find the softest blanket in the house, and happily disappear into a book. For others, the first 5 p.m. sunset feels less cozy autumn evening and more like dread and Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) creeping up.
Enter: hygge.
Hygge (roughly pronounced hoo-gah) is a Danish concept that is often translated as “coziness,” although that doesn’t quite capture it. Hygge is less about owning the correct number of knit blankets and more about creating experiences of warmth, comfort, connection, simplicity, and presence.
And while research specifically studying hygge as a psychological intervention is limited, there is some fascinating science behind the practices and mindset it represents—particularly when it comes to navigating the darker months of the year.
First, the darker months really can affect us
If you notice a shift in your energy, sleep, motivation, or mood as summer disappears, you’re not necessarily imagining it.
Our bodies respond to light.
As daylight hours decrease in the fall and winter, changes in light exposure can affect our circadian rhythms; the internal biological processes that help regulate sleep, alertness, and mood. Seasonal changes have also been associated with changes in melatonin and serotonin systems. For some people, these changes are significant enough to contribute to Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a form of depression with a recurring seasonal pattern.
Even among people who don’t experience SAD, seasonal changes can affect sleep and energy.
Darkness isn’t the whole story
We can’t control when the sun sets.
But how we relate to the season may influence how we experience it.
Psychologist Kari Leibowitz and researcher Joar Vittersø (…) studied people living across different regions of Norway, including areas that experience remarkably little sunlight during the winter. They found that people who had a more positive wintertime mindset also reported greater life satisfaction, more positive emotions, greater psychological flourishing, and personal growth. Interestingly, people living farther north, where winters were darker, tended to have more positive attitudes toward winter.
This doesn’t mean we can positive-think our way out of seasonal depression. The study was correlational, so we can’t say that changing someone’s mindset will necessarily cause improvements in wellbeing.
But it does raise an intriguing possibility: What if instead of treating autumn and winter as several miserable months we need to endure until spring, we intentionally create reasons to enjoy them?
That’s where hygge becomes psychologically interesting.
Hygge is less about escaping darkness and more about working with it
One of the things I love about hygge is that it doesn’t require pretending winter isn’t dark.
The darkness is almost part of the point.
Candles look beautiful because the room is dark. A warm drink feels especially comforting when it’s cold outside. Gathering around a table feels different when the evening stretches out ahead of you.
Instead of asking:
How do I make the next five months feel more like summer?
Hygge asks:
What becomes possible because this season is different?
That’s a subtle but potentially powerful reframe.
Researchers studying wintertime mindset have suggested that people can selectively notice very different aspects of exactly the same winter experience. Snow can mean scraping your windshield and shovelling the driveway, and it can also mean beautiful walks, skiing, or watching snow fall from inside a warm home. Both realities are true.
The goal isn’t toxic positivity.
It’s expanding what we’re paying attention to.
Your environment can become a cue for slowing down
Hygge is also highly sensory.
Soft lighting. Warm food. Comfortable clothing. Familiar music. Candles. Blankets. A favourite mug. The smell of something baking. Sitting around a table with people you love.
None of these things individually constitutes a mental-health treatment. But collectively, they can help us intentionally create moments that feel pleasant, safe, meaningful, or restorative.
And that matters because when mood drops, people often naturally begin doing less of the things that make life rewarding.
In psychology, one treatment approach for depression called behavioural activation works in part by helping people intentionally reconnect with meaningful and rewarding activities rather than waiting until they “feel like it.”
This principle is also incorporated into cognitive behavioural therapy for Seasonal Affective Disorder. CBT-SAD encourages people to identify and schedule enjoyable and engaging activities during the months when they might otherwise withdraw.
In other words: Sometimes feeling better doesn’t start with feeling motivated. Sometimes it starts with making the soup anyway.
Hygge can also create rituals of connection
There’s another important piece of hygge that gets lost when we reduce it to candles and expensive Scandinavian furniture:
Hygge is often social.
It’s lingering over dinner. Having coffee with a friend. Playing a board game. Sharing food. Sitting around talking without necessarily accomplishing anything.
That distinction matters.
The darker months can make it easy for our worlds to shrink. We go to work in the dark. We come home in the dark. Plans require boots and coats and occasionally scraping a small glacier off the windshield.
So connection may need to become more intentional.
A weekly Sunday dinner. A standing coffee date. Friday movie nights. Inviting someone over for soup rather than waiting for an elaborate reason to host.
Hygge gives ordinary connection a little ceremony.
And sometimes that’s exactly what makes us protect it.
Cozy doesn’t have to mean staying inside until April
There is one important caveat: Embracing darkness doesn’t mean abandoning daylight.
For people experiencing winter-pattern SAD in particular, bright-light therapy is an established treatment. The National Institute of Mental Health describes morning light therapy using a 10,000-lux light box as one treatment option, and clinical trials and systematic reviews support bright-light therapy for reducing symptoms of winter-pattern SAD.
So our autumn strategy doesn’t need to be:
Become one with the couch.
Think more:
Seek daylight when you can, move your body in ways that feel good, maintain connection and routines, and make the darkness feel a little nicer when it arrives.
A morning walk and an evening candle can coexist.
Maybe autumn doesn’t need to be something we fight
Our culture often treats seasonal change like an inconvenience.
Hygge offers another possibility.
What if seasonal change could be a cue to adjust?
Maybe autumn can mean earlier evenings and slower dinners. More books. More soup. More invitations to come over without cleaning the entire house first. More blankets. More walks through crunchy leaves. More noticing the tiny rituals that make ordinary days feel good.
Not because a candle is going to cure depression.
And not because we’re supposed to convince ourselves that freezing rain is delightful.
But because our psychological experience of a season is shaped by more than its temperature and hours of daylight.
It’s also shaped by what we do with it.
So yes, the days are getting shorter.
Maybe the question isn’t only “How do we survive the darkness?”
Maybe it’s also:
“How can we make the darkness feel a little warmer?”
And frankly, if the answer involves soup, a ridiculous number of blankets, good company, and going to bed slightly earlier?
Science could certainly give us worse homework.
References
Cuijpers, P., Ciharova, M., Tong, L., Liu, Y., Sprenger, A. A., Miguel, C., Karyotaki, E., & Harrer, M. (2026). Behavioral activation for depression: A comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 128, 102783. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2026.102783
Ekers, D., Webster, L., Van Straten, A., Cuijpers, P., Richards, D., & Gilbody, S. (2014). Behavioural activation for depression: An update of meta-analysis of effectiveness and subgroup analysis. PLOS ONE, 9(6), e100100. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0100100
Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review. PLOS Medicine, 7(7), e1000316. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316
Leibowitz, K., & Vittersø, J. (2020). Winter is coming: Wintertime mindset and wellbeing in Norway. International Journal of Wellbeing, 10(4), 35–54. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v10i4.935
National Institute of Mental Health. (n.d.). Seasonal affective disorder. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/seasonal-affective-disorder
A note on the research
While hygge itself has not been extensively studied as a psychological intervention, many of the practices associated with hygge overlap with well-established areas of psychological research. These include intentionally engaging in pleasurable and meaningful activities, maintaining social connection, responding to seasonal changes in light, and adopting a more adaptive mindset toward winter.
For example, Leibowitz and Vittersø (2020) found that a more positive wintertime mindset was associated with greater life satisfaction, positive emotion, flourishing, and personal growth among people living in Norway—including communities experiencing particularly dark winters. Importantly, this research was correlational, so it does not establish that changing our attitude toward winter will necessarily improve mental health. It does, however, suggest that how we interpret and engage with the season may be one piece of the seasonal-wellbeing puzzle.
There is considerably stronger evidence for behavioural activation—intentionally increasing engagement with rewarding, meaningful, or valued activities—as an intervention for depression. A recent comprehensive meta-analysis included 105 trials and nearly 14,000 participants and found behavioural activation to be an effective treatment for adult depression.
So, scientifically speaking, we probably can’t prescribe “three candles, one chunky blanket, and soup as needed.” But creating small rituals of pleasure, connection, meaning, and comfort during a season when we might otherwise withdraw? There is good psychological science behind that idea.
If you’re interested in bringing a little more hygge into your own life, we love The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living by Meik Wiking, founder and CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen.
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