“Goodnight” in Spanish (and 30+ other Spanish Evening Phrases)

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*Bostezo.*

Do you know how to express your sleepiness and wish someone “goodnight” in Spanish? No? Then you’ve come to the right place.

There are many ways we say we’re tired and goodnight in English. Things like “I’m hitting the hay” or “I’m hitting the sack”. While they don’t say these exact equivalents, there are some similar evening phrases in Spanish you can use to say goodnight. They’re good Spanish phrases to keep on hand because you’ll say them most days to those around you.

Don’t fall asleep just yet, let’s get started!

“Goodnight” in Spanish

“Goodnight” in Spanish is simple: buenas noches.

Buenas is the feminine form of the adjective bueno, which means “good”. Noches means “nights” and is a feminine noun. So, you get “good nights”.

There’s no conjugation or need to worry about politeness level here. Buenas noches is fine for any social situation to say goodnight or goodbye. But, you also use this phrase to say hello to someone in the evening, like you would say “good evening” as a greeting in English.

“Have a Good Night” in Spanish

To wish someone “have a good night” in Spanish, you say Que tengas buenas noches.

But, in Spanish, you may actually want to wish they pass a good night. For this, you say Que pases buenas noches. The formal version (for someone you don’t know well) uses the usted form, which is the polite form of “you”. For this, the phrase is Ques pase buenas noches usted.

“Good Evening” in Spanish

There’s no true “good evening” phrase in Spanish. All afternoon, up until 7:00 or 8:00pm when it starts getting dark, you say buenas tardes (“good afternoon”). After dark, you use buenas noches (“good night”) as a greeting.

This reflects Spanish culture. The Spanish workday is much longer than normal, running from about 8:30am to 8:00pm. One of the reasons it runs so long is because they tend to take a long break in the middle of the day (about 1:30pm to 4:30pm), called a siesta.

For Spaniards who work these typical hours, afternoon (tarde) lasts until they get off work, and then nighttime (noche) begins. It’s a bit different from in English, but it’s one less greeting you need to learn.

“Sweet Dreams” in Spanish

In English, we often say “sweet dreams” in response to someone saying “goodnight”. In Spanish, you can say “dulces sueños”. Dulce means “sweet” and sueños means “dreams”, so the translation is exactly the same. If you want to make it a full sentence, you can add Que tengas dulces sueños (“Have sweet dreams”).

If you’re talking to someone you’re close to, you can also say descansa. It means “rest well”, and it’s a casual way to wish someone to sleep peacefully after a long, tiring day.

“Sleep Well” in Spanish

Another way we respond to “goodnight” in English is “sleep tight” or “sleep well”. For this, you can say duermas bien. “To sleep” in Spanish is dormir, and bien means “good” or “well”.

If you want to say specifically “sleep tight” it’s sueño profundo, although this isn’t as common in Spanish as duermas bien. The word profundo actually means “deep”, so you’re wishing someone “deep sleep”.

“Goodnight My Love” in Spanish

If you’re talking to your spouse or significant other, or even your child, you can say Buenas noches mi amor. This means “Goodnight, my love”. If you’re saying this to both your spouse and child at the same time, you change mi amor to the plural form: Buenas noches mis amores.

Mi is the possessive “I” in Spanish, and amor is love. You’ll often hear people calling their loved ones mi amor in Spanish. If you want to be particularly affectionate, you can say Que sueñes conmigo (“May you dream of me”).

“Goodnight Beautiful” in Spanish

In Spanish culture, it’s common to compliment someone and call them “my love” or “beautiful”. Spanish is full of romance words, and Spanish speaking people love to sound romantic. It’s nice to always be complimented, right?

To tell someone “Goodnight, beautiful”, you say buenas noches, hermosa. Other common words are bella (“lovely”) or bonita (“pretty”). Although hermosa is the literal translation for “beautiful”, it’s more common to say bella, because hermosa sounds a bit formal. You can also change the ending -a to -o when talking to a man. So, bonita becomes bonito, and so on. Why not try complimenting others in several different ways when you wish them goodnight?

“Goodnight Handsome” in Spanish

Buenas noches guapo means “Goodnight, handsome” or “Goodnight, good looking” in Spanish. It can be used for men, but you can also describe a woman as guapa.

Even though words like bella and guapo translate as “beautiful”, “pretty” or “handsome” in English, they’re not gender-bound like they are in English. So, when you say guapa, it takes on the meaning of “lovely” even though the literal translation is “handsome”.

“Goodnight Baby” in Spanish

This one is easy to remember. “Goodnight, baby” in Spanish is buenas noches bebe. But Spanish is full of creative cute nicknames, like mi cielito (“my little heaven”) or mi corazón (“my heart”). So you could change it up in many different ways.

If you’re speaking to a child, you could say buenas noches, chiquito or chiquita (“Good night, little boy/girl”).

“Goodnight, Sweet Dreams” in Spanish

To wish someone a good night and sweet dreams, you say buenas noches y dulces sueños. This is a combination of the two phrases from above, but you add y (“and”) to connect them. You could add mi querida or mi querido to the end, which means “my dear”.

There’s another way to say this in Spanish, though. Que sueños con angelitos. This means “Have dreams with angels” and it’s one of those unique expressions in Spanish that give a beautiful image. Who doesn’t want to dream with angels?

“Go to Bed” in Spanish

If you’re talking to a child and need to say “Go to bed!” as a command, you would use ¡Acostarse! It means “lay down”, “turn in” or “go to bed”.

For “I’m going to bed”, you can say Me voy a la cama. Other ways to say it are Ya me voy acostar, or “I’m going to lie down”, and Ya me voy a dormir, “I’m going to sleep.” Ya means “already”, so you’re in the state of action where you’re actually on your way back to your room at that moment. You’re already heading to sleep.

Do you normally say “I’m hitting the hay” instead? Well, you can say something like that, too. Me voy al sobre (“I’m off to the envelope”), and Me voy al baile de las sábanas blancas (“I’m off to the dance of the white sheets”) are a couple unique sayings for “go to bed” in Spanish.

“Bedtime” in Spanish

Is it your bedtime? Then it’s your hora de acostarse. Your “time to turn in”.

Are you feeling sleepy? Then you say, tengo sueño. You can put it together to tell someone you’re tired and ready for bed with Tengo sueño. Es hora de acostarse. (“I’m tired. It’s time to turn in.”)

“Night” in Spanish

As I mentioned earlier, noche is “night” in Spanish. But “evening” in Spanish is also noche. Remember, tarde is afternoon until around 8:00pm in Spanish cultures, and after that, it’s all just noche.

”See You Tomorrow” in Spanish

If you’re saying goodbye, goodnight, and see you tomorrow, you can tell someone Buenas noches. ¡Hasta mañana!

Hasta means “until” and mañana means both “morning” or “tomorrow”, depending on context. So it can mean “Until the morning!” or “Until tomorrow!” in this case. Or, if you aren’t sure when you’re seeing them next, simply say hasta luego (“see you later”) or hasta pronto (“see you soon”).

“Midnight Snack” in Spanish

Are you a midnight feeder? I love a good late night snack myself! Since the Spanish workday is so long, and most Spaniards stay up very late, midnight snacks are an everyday thing for many people. They’re called bocadillo de medianoche (“the snack of midnight”). The most common midnight snack foods in Spain are probably churros and chocolate caliente. Yum!

And Now It’s Time to Say “Buenas Noches”

¿Tienes sueño? (“Are you sleepy?”) You might be after all that studying. Take a break, go lie down, and que tengas dulces sueños.

But if you’re still wide awake, why not try learning good morning and other useful Spanish phrases for the rest of the day?