Waking up at 5:30 AM because the room is already bright? In Toronto on June 21 the sun comes up at 5:36 AM, so if you sleep 11 to 7 your window gets 84 minutes of daylight before the alarm goes off. Night shift is worse, sleep 8 AM to 3 PM and the sun is up for all of it.
Most of that light comes through the window glass, so start there. Our Blackout Blind goes up on the glass with suction cups, no drill, so it works in a rental. Then fix the gaps, the door and the small lights, in that order. Here's each step.
Step 1: find every spot the light gets in
Do this at midday on a sunny day, not at night.
- Close everything you normally close and turn the lights off.
- Shut the door and stand in the room for two minutes so your eyes adjust.
- Look at the edges: the top of the curtain, the sides of the blind, the gap under the door, the line where the two curtain panels meet.
- Write down every spot you see.
Most rooms have three or four. The window glass is usually the biggest by a long way.
Step 2: cover the window glass
Curtains hang in front of the window, so light comes round the top and the sides of them. Covering the glass stops the light before it's in the room at all.
The Blackout Blind sticks to the glass with the suction cups along its top band. There's no rail, and no marks on the frame when it comes down. The window side has a PU coating that stops the light and the room side is soft brushed black fabric. It comes in 130 x 100 cm for C$44.99, or 130 x 200 cm for taller windows at C$54.99.
Before you put it up:
- Measure the glass, not the frame, and pick the size from that.
- Wipe the glass clean and let it dry. Suction cups grip clean smooth glass and let go on dust.
- Press each cup flat from the middle out to push the air out.
- Put it on the room side of the glass.
Already have curtains? Keep them. The blind does the glass, the curtain covers what's left round the edges. If you're stuck between the two, our blackout blind vs blackout curtains page goes through it.
Step 3: the gaps round the window
Do the two-minute test again with the blind up. Whatever light is left is usually coming round the frame.
The middle, where the two curtain panels meet, is the most common leak. Clip them together with a binder clip or a clothes peg. A curtain wider than the window that hangs past the sill covers the sides. Light over the top of the rod stops if you hang the curtain higher or fold a towel over the rod.
Step 4: the door
A lot of homes leave the hallway light on at night, and it comes straight in under the bedroom door. A draft stopper or a rolled towel along the bottom covers it. Light round the sides of the door too? A strip of foam weatherstripping on the frame fixes that. It's the same stuff people put on doors to keep the cold out, and it peels off when you move.
Step 5: the small lights inside the room
Once the window and the door are dark you start seeing everything else, the TV standby light, the phone charger, the power bar, the router. A small piece of black electrical tape over each LED does it.
Leave the smoke alarm and the carbon monoxide alarm alone, don't cover anything on them. Phones go face down or in a drawer.
Step 6: an eye mask for the rooms you can't fix
A hotel, a guest bed, a partner reading with the lamp on. Some nights the room isn't yours.
Flat masks press on your eyes. Our Eye Mask has moulded cups about 20 mm deep that sit off your eyes and lashes, so you can blink with it on. A slider on the band sets the fit and it's feather light. C$13.99 in black, purple or pink. More on the difference in 3D sleep mask vs flat sleep mask.
In a hotel
Hotel curtains hardly ever meet in the middle. The pant hangers in the closet have clips on them, use one to pin the two panels shut. Or pack the blind, it folds flat into a suitcase and goes up on the hotel window with the same suction cups.
Night shift and summer mornings
If you sleep in the day the glass is the whole problem, there's sunlight on it for your entire sleep. Go through steps 1 to 5 in order and keep the mask for the brightest days.
To see how much daylight hits your window while you sleep, put your city and your hours into our sunrise calculator. It shows the number night by night for the whole year.
In Ontario the clocks go back an hour on Sunday, November 1, so sunrise lands an hour earlier on the clock the next morning. The clock change page has the sunrise times for each city.
The short version
- Find the leaks at midday.
- Cover the glass.
- Clip the curtains and block the door gap.
- Tape the LEDs.
- Mask for the rest.
The Ultimate Sleep Kit has the blind and the mask plus a box of putty earplugs, for less than the blind and the mask cost separately. Everything for a dark room is in our blackout collection, shipped free to 96 countries.
Working nights? The guide to sleeping during the day covers the schedule that goes with a dark room.