Children up at 0500 at the moment and it's doing our heads in. We wonder (?hope) that this is due to early light, as even with blackout lined curtains and venetian blinds it's still quite light in their rooms.
Anyone any suggestions about how to blackout better? In our old house we had full height & width curtains in our room, with a pelmet and it was as black as the inside of a cow, but this won't work in the kids' rooms.
Ta,
Andy
You need a decent curtain/wall overlap and a pelmet or the light just comes over the top/round the sides.
You need a decent curtain/wall overlap and a pelmet or the light just comes over the top/round the sides
That's exactly the problem, however due to radiators we won't get a big enough drop to prevent light bleeding under the curtain.
Are they going to bed tired?
Are you able to send the mrs over to their room whilst you feign deep sleep?
What we did was this: cut a bit of blackout material to the shape of the window - velcro round the frame, sew velcro round the edge of the material and then have complete darkness. Worked really well for getting our kids to sleep past 5am.
Tuck the bottom of the curtain in between the top of the radiator and the wall.
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My missus made up some Roman blinds out of heavy material and we fitted them tight into the aperture - worked a treat
Have a look [url= http://www.blocblinds.co.uk ]Here[/url] they do blackout blinds with a side frame to completely block light out
dunelm black out blinds, if you leave them down in the day keeps the room cooler as well
Bit of cardboard? Our spare room has terrible curtains so I cut a bit of cardboard to fit which just pushes against the window when our granddaughter stays. Rest of the time it slides under the bed.
Doesn't look nice from the out side but not sure I care. May be worth try first of all to see if the light (or lack of it) makes a difference.
db
A cassette blackout roller blind is the only real way to get total blackout, quite expensive, but does the job. all other blinds / curtains options will always let in some light bleed. If interested find a good reliable LOCAL (not national) blind business.
We used black out blinds with a bit of uPVC 90deg trim (cheap as chips from local merchant) glue tabbed to the wall - just tucked the blind behind.
Edit - basically makes a cheap cassette blind.
We were so desperate we taped black bin bags to the window. Worked so well we didn't take them down for ages. Without sleep nothing is possible. Good luck 🙂
http://www.ikea.com/au/en/catalog/products/80130658/
Got some of the cheap Ikea black out blinds and cut them up to fit. Velcro sounds better than the drawing pins we used.
There is a product we used, it was a film that you cut to size and stuck to your windows via static, so you can remove and refit as often as you like. We bought rolls to take on holiday with us is we could apply to the windows there. With blackout blinds or curtains you usually always get some light leakage but with this film stuff you can completely shut it out.
Travel blackout blind on suckers by mothercare or kiddiecare. Attached straight to the window, has a good perimeter overlap and can be used anywhere. Really good bit of kit. My son has no idea that's it's still sunny when he goes to bed.
We used a black out material that was attached to the window frame with velcro. It came in a kit, simply cut the velcro strips to go round the full frame and cut the blackout material slightly larger than the frame (by slightly I mean about 1cm) It worked brilliantly and even had the room pitch black in the middle of the day.
I think this was the company I got it from http://www.easyblindsonline.co.uk/
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Basement/cellar? 😉
Have a look online for a gro-blind. Is a blind with suckers on.
You're all approaching it from the 'complicated angle'...
Drop of superglue on each eyelid just before bed...boom...total darkness for each kid...
DrP
We have blackout blinds. One over laps the end of the window by an inch or so, it lets in loads of light around the outside so I went to Wilkos and got some Velcro sticky backed pads. I put them down the wall and blind and it seems to be working fine.
We got this kit from amazon. Works well with only a small amount of light seepage at edges. We could probably got better performance but we cut quite tight to size because we wanted to do 2 windows with one kit.
[url= http://www.amazon.co.uk/easyblackout-blackout-blind-WHITE-available/dp/B002WCGBSY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403508443&sr=8-1&keywords=easy+blackout+blinds ]Linky[/url]
Just borrowed a gro-blind from a friend and it seems to be helping our 2 go to bed, and stay there. (a bit)
http://gro.co.uk/gro-anywhere-blind
Is it me or does "gro-blind" sound like a warning for teenage boys?
+1 for the gro
Bin bags taped to the windows 🙂
We just bought the gro too.
It's ok. A bit of a faff to put up the first time. Gets easier though (we have to take most of it off every day to open the window but it doesn't take long in the evening).
We've stuck it to the window frame rather than the glass now which helps.
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We managed to crack a window on holiday with a Gro Blind...
Another +1 gro blind
I dream of having this problem with my 5 year old. Currently we need the main light on almost full brightness on the dimmer, and he'll sleep 7pm till 7am no problem.
Darkness is for grownups and babies apparently.