Light Leaking Around Blackout Curtains: What Fixes It
The curtains are blackout and the room's still bright at noon, from the gap at the top and down the sides. People who sleep by day say what holds it out.
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Two layers of black bed sheets and a blackout curtain, nailed tight round every window. That's how far one person in r/Nightshift had gone to sleep through the day, and they asked there for something less chaotic.
If your blackout curtains are up and the room still isn't dark, you're where another asker there started, with the day getting in at the top and side edges.
The fixes sort by where the light gets in. The free ones work on the curtain itself. The rest put something on or over the glass, and one of them is a film that divides the people who've tried it.
Start with the curtain
The cheapest fixes close the three gaps a curtain leaves. One night worker does all three with things from around the house, and says their bedroom is a cave.
- The middle. Clothes pins, clipped down the join where the two panels meet, so no light seeps between them.
- The sides. Painter's tape along each edge, holding the curtain to the wall.
- The top. Beach towels laid over the curtain rod, to close the gap above the curtain.
Tape is the weak link. Someone else has taped curtain edges, cardboard and paper blinds, and calls it a good short-term fix. Still, in their experience the tape falls off every few months and has to go back on. A window of cardboard and peeling tape isn't much to wake up to, either.
The permanent version of the same idea is magnets. One owner screwed magnets into the wall, stuck the curtain's edge to them, and says no light gets through at all. Pin the edges of the curtain to the wall and the sides are solved; the top still wants its towel.
Film on the glass
The next layer goes on the pane rather than the curtain. A static-cling blackout film is a sheet of black plastic that holds to the glass without glue and peels off again. It comes by the roll in more than one length, and you cut it to the pane.
The person who pasted this listing into a thread called it a game changer, and left it at that. Another owner put film over the windows with blackout curtains over the film, and says it keeps the light out and adds a bit of insulation. A third ordered a static film cut to their window's measurements and says the room is pitch black whatever the hour.
The dissent is one reply that calls it a better-looking layer which doesn't completely block the light. Nobody in either thread measured how dark the film got the room, so what the four of them add up to is this: film is a second layer behind the curtain, not a replacement for it. Buy it for that job, measure the pane before you pick a length, and keep the curtains.
A cover that seals shut
For a window you can give up during the day, two replies to the bed-sheet asker back a fitted cover. One of them explains it in two lines:
It's basically a cover that seals completely with velcro tape. It's the closest thing I've found to 100% blackout.
u/cielpur, in r/Nightshift
The other has worked swing shifts for ten years and has had them since almost day one. Both name the same maker, Blackoutez, which sells covers made to your window's size from its own site. The home-made version comes from an owner who ordered blackout vinyl and holds it up with Velcro.
The catch is the window itself. A sealed cover buys the dark with the view: you can't see out until it comes down.
The made-to-measure end of this is a window insert. The person whose tape kept falling off had custom ones made, and almost a year in says they've yet to let them down. They cost a lot, though, and only fit a window several inches deep.
A foam panel in the frame
Someone else in that thread has seen people cut a panel of rigid foam insulation to the window and run weather stripping round the edge. It presses into the frame and seals, and lifts out when you want the window back. Foil on the glass is the same reply's answer for a window you never want back.
It's the cover for people who'd rather cut than order.
The sliver that's left
One more person there has given up on getting the window perfectly blacked out and wears an eye mask instead, because "just a sliver of sunlight makes a room so bright."
The bed-sheet asker didn't think they could sleep in one. This person had thought the same, and was surprised how quickly they got used to it. A mask covers the sliver you can't find.
Do the free ones this afternoon and sleep on them once. Whatever's still bright afterwards tells you what to buy.
Sealed edges and a room that's still grey point at the glass, and that's the job for the film. A room you want properly black, and can do without the view from, is the case for a sealed cover or a foam panel.
Keep a mask in the drawer either way. Once the room really is dark at three in the afternoon, the alarm has to do the sun's job, which is where a sunrise alarm clock comes in.
