Shifting my light/dark time. Want to move it 5 hours. HALP!!1!

I set my 12/12 timer to turn on at 5pm and run till 5am with intentions of avoiding heat during the day. However my home is still pretty warm at 5pm. Seems the ideal time would be 9 or 10pm.

Is there a safe way to do this?

I am thinking I can go in during the day cycle and add an hour to the dark cycle so they stay on till 6am. This will give me 13 hours of dark. Then the next light period I can move the light off mark to 6pm and it will be a 12 hour light cycle. and a 12 hour dark cycle.

Then the next day add an hour to the dark cycle and repeat the process.

Will this screw up my plants if I adjust these 4/5 hours over a few days or should I just give them one 16 hour night and then right back to 12/12?

just keep them in dark until your ready to start the adjusted light schedule

you could adjust the starting time back an hour per day for 5 days and your plants would notice the least. IMO

You could do it over a period of 5 days doing 30 min each day or 2.5 days for 1hr each or just do it all at once, they wont even notice as long as it's just this one time.

Just extend your dark period until you're ready for the lights to come on. FYI I'll be doing exactly that tomorrow to go from a 8am - 8pm cycle to a 7pm - 7am cycle now that my minisplit is operational and I dont have to worry about nightime light leaks / transfering outside and light deping do to heat.