Organisms often experience adverse high temperatures during the daytime, but they may also recover or repair themselves during the night-time when temperatures are more moderate. Thermal effects of daily fluctuating temperatures may thus be divided into two opposite processes (i.e. negative effects of daytime heat stress and positive effects of night-time recovery). Despite recent progress on the consequences of increased daily temperature variability, the independent and combined effects of daytime and night-time temperatures on organism performance remain unclear. By independently manipulating daily maximum and minimum temperatures, we tested how changes in daytime heat stress and night-time recovery affect development, survival and heat tolerance of the lady beetle species Propylea japonica. Thermal effects on development and survival differed between daytime and night-time. Daytime high temperatures had negative effects whereas night-time mild temperatures had positive effects. The extent of daytime heat stress and night-time recovery also affected development and critical thermal maximum, which indicates that there were both independent and combined effects of daytime and night-time temperatures on thermal performances. Our findings provide insight into the thermal effect of day-to-night temperature variability and have important implications for predicting the impacts of diel asymmetric warming under climate change.