Am I too old for Las Vegas nightclubs?

The short version, by decade

Late twenties. You are the median. Everything is open to you and nothing needs adjusting.

Thirties. Still completely at home, especially in open format and hip hop rooms and at pool parties. The EDM rooms on a college weekend will feel young. Booking a table is the difference between a great night and a long one.

Forties. You will be older than the median in the big nightclubs, and nobody will care or notice. What will bother you is standing for four hours in a crowd. Choose rooms with real seating, choose earlier nights, and use the lounges as the main event rather than the warm up.

Fifty and up. Nightclubs will feel like someone else's party unless you are going with a group who wants exactly that. The Strip's cocktail lounges, the live music rooms and the dayclubs with cabanas are where a genuinely good night lives.

Which rooms skew which way

Music genre predicts crowd age more reliably than anything else.

• Big room EDM and festival style nights pull the youngest crowd in the city, weighted hard to 21 to 26. If you are 40 and want a stadium scale light show, go, enjoy it, and book a table.
• Open format rooms, which move between hip hop, throwbacks and current pop, run the broadest age range on the Strip. This is where a mixed age group is most comfortable.
• Hip hop nights skew a little older than EDM and are generally a good fit into the late thirties and forties.
• Dayclubs are more age forgiving than nightclubs across the board, because the format is a pool and a daybed rather than a dance floor.
• Cocktail lounges and live music rooms are the answer at any age when you want to hear each other. The Strip has a genuinely excellent lounge scene now, and it is where a lot of people over 40 have quietly moved.

What to wear over 35

Better, not younger. The single most common mistake is dressing to match a 23 year old's outfit, which reads as trying. The version that works at any age is the one that always works: dark, well fitting, quality fabric, clean shoes. A well cut blazer over a plain tee gets a man into any room on the Strip and looks better than a shirt with hardware on it. For women, a good dress or well cut trousers with heels you can actually stand in.

The other over 35 advantage: you can afford the shoes that do not hurt. Use it. See the full dress code answer for the venue by venue detail.

The practical adjustments that matter more than age

1. Go earlier. A room at 11pm and the same room at 1:30am are different experiences. The earlier one is better company and better conversation.
2. Sit down. Say it again. A table or a daybed transforms the night past 35.
3. Pick weeknights. Thursday and Sunday at a top room means the same production with a crowd that is not there on a college weekend.
4. Lead with the lounge. Start in a good cocktail room, go to the club for ninety minutes at the peak, leave while it is still fun.

What nobody at the door is thinking

There is no upper age limit anywhere in Las Vegas and no door person is judging you for being 44. What doors care about is dress code and group composition. An older, well dressed group of four is an easy admit at any room in the city, and frequently an easier one than six 22 year olds in the general admission line.

If you want a room that will actually fit your group rather than a list of the loudest names, tell a host the ages and what you want out of the night. Steering people away from the wrong room is a large part of the job, and it is free.