[AndrewKemendo]

I have fought the encroaching light battle for almost 25 years. It's not as easy as the author makes it sound while still having a normal human looking room.

Here is the pack-rat/shut in version: If you have any windows in your room the only real solution is some combination of a lightproof sheeting (light proof fabric, aluminum foil etc...) and light proof adhesive (black gaffers tape is the best or aluminum foil tape). Since there are very few window frames that give good clearance around them for affixing things, and don't have wild trim or corners the latter material really makes or breaks your situation.

Congratulations, now you have to work on your door. Door sweeps usually do a good enough job but those pesky door cracks can be a nightmare. The easiest solution to this is a blackout drape hung over your door as though it was another door. Reasonable people can disagree about whether to put this inside the room or outside the room - as long as you have a good "seal" on the sides and top it should be fine. This causes problems for egress if needed however.

The last and simplest thing is to just move all devices that cause light completely out of the room or disable their persistent light sources completely.

The good citizen version: Using your standard draping you will need to sew blackout fabric to the back of your draping with basically no gaps. Stitch Witchery does not work. Hot glue peels away. Sewing is the only reliable option.

You will then need to choose your affixing method. I personally like using neodymium magnets, but in the quantity that you need them, they get pricey. They are also more complicated to line up. The easier version, which is still pricey is to use industrial strength velcro. You will have to measure and line up near perfectly where you affix the velcro on the drape to where your hooks/loops on the window/wall go. This is way more complicated that it sounds in practice - again because windows rarely are simple flat squares with no trim. Affixing to the wall/window is always a tradeoff. Anything that "sticks" will peel off eventually and take any paint with it. If you nail/staple it on, now you have holes in your wall. So pick your poison. Even after all this work, you will still likely have some leakage. That is where the extra fabric comes in handy to drape over the velcro sides. In general it will cover you night or day, but this one is really hard to get perfectly.

Treat the door the same - generally you can have the drape roll up during the day without issue.

This option lets you open the windows and drapes with minimal amount of tell to your mole-like behavior. It ends up being cumulatively a lot more work however.

I have tried to think up simple consumer solutions (I see lots of aluminum foil in windows -- watch you'll see it too now)to this, but windows are so damn variable that it is near impossible and the only major consumer solutions right now are not worth the price.

[jakevoytko]

I recently gave up on making my room blackout dark when I sleep. Instead, I wear sleep masks. They're not perfect: they slip a little as I sleep, and the cheap ones wear out fast. But it's still not expensive ($10 for 3), and the masks themselves block all light. I'm happy with them. They do the job, and they come with me when I travel. Plus, it makes some intuitive sense to block light at the narrowest point - just in front of your eyes, versus from every possible source.

[AndrewKemendo]

Great point and I should have added that because it is my solution now as well. FWIW if you have the opportunity to snag a sleep mask from an Emirates international business or first class, do so; it is by far the finest I have used and mine has lasted 6 years now.

[PencilAndPaper]

Sleep masks make me sweaty and squish my eyeballs. I opted for tying a silk scarf around my head instead. Luxury.

[burgreblast]

I highly recommend http://www.mindfold.com/

The branding is a bit silly. But. You can open your eyes and it remains pitch black--zero light leakage. I started using them on flights, now use at home when I really need the extra z's.

[PencilAndPaper]

Awesome!

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I only find this to be a problem when I travel abroad. Because in my home country (Spain), the vast majority of residential buildings have blinds like this:

http://www.persianas-ruiz.com/Contenidos/NotaA1.jpg

These blinds don't go behind the window frames, but in the window, fitting in grooves carved in the window itself. With that, absolutely zero light will enter through your windows at night.

I have seen that most other countries don't use this kind of blinds, and I wonder why that is. They seem like a win-win to me. If you want an absolutely dark room you get it, and if you don't, you only need to not lower them 100% and then little rays of light will get through the horizontal grooves that you see (which close if you fully lower the blind).

When I travel abroad I always have to do all kinds of involved stuff (like you describe) to get my room reasonably dark, and it's so incredibly easy if you have the right kind of blinds...

I think it may be the only thing where Spain can give the rest of the world a lesson :)

[tiziano88]

We have the same in Italy, and I still don't understand why other countries don't use the same blinds everywhere too.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

According to the Spanish Wikipedia, "with the mentality that the wealth of a country depends on its citizen's labor, the use of these blinds was discouraged in some countries, to the extreme that Benjamin Franklin even proposed that church bells should ring at dawn so that the people are ready to work from dawn to dusk".

It cites no sources, but some Googling uncovers this letter by Franklin:

http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/franklin3.html

which in fact contains the remark about church bells, and also proposes that "a tax be laid of a louis per window, on every window that is provided with shutters to keep out the light of the sun".

However, that letter seems like very scanty evidence to say that using that kind of blinds was actually "discouraged" anywhere...

[CamperBob2]

It's definitely worthwhile to take extreme measures to lightproof your room. Foil works, but if the budget permits, you can use a layer of Dynamat, Auralex Sheetblok, or a similar substance to block a fair bit of external sound from your bedroom while eliminating light entirely.

Yes, your bedroom will look like a schizophrenic's sex dungeon after you do this. Yes, that's fine, because you may be able to get much better sleep, which is more important than the aesthetics of your bedroom.

My bedroom is so dark that I can't use LED light bulbs in the ceiling fixtures. It turns out that they use an incredibly efficient fluorescent coating that glows brightly for hours, enough to let me make out objects on the floor. That's how I knew the room was finally dark enough.

[snowwrestler]

If the point is to match our natural heritage of the stars and moon, then 100% blackout is not actually accurate. Even on a moonless night, starlight is quite bright--bright enough to see contours of the landscape.

I've slept outside in remote places many times, far away from city lights. It's not even near 100% black. So I would not kill yourself to get every little stray bit of light.

[AndrewKemendo]

For me it is not the point to match a "natural" (whatever that is) sleeping environment. Rather, it is to reduce the number of things that will disturb me while I am trying to sleep.

I don't prefer to wake up when the sun comes up mostly because I don't prefer to sleep when it goes down. So it is a guarantee that I will want to be asleep when there is a significant light source outside my house. Eliminating that will optimize my sleep. End of story.

[graeme]

What's the difference between 99.9% effective and 100%? I velcroed my blind to my window and turned off any light sources. J I can see a very, very, very faint glow in a couple spots around the blind, and if I look sideways I can catch a tiny bit under the door. Is there any benefit to going further?

[solarmist]

Probably not. As pointed out above in the open you'll usually have stars which, away from light sources, give off a fair amount of light on their own.

[AndrewKemendo]

That is a personal preference in my opinion and largely rests on how much you think your sleep would be impacted by those sources.