Room Darkening Shades

JCPenney has wonderful darkening shades in a variety of colors at reasonable prices. The are also very easy to install.

I bought mine at Target - they are dark blue and work great, not to mention significantly cheaper than the online offerings.

I don't know how your son's room is decorated, but we have dark denim curtains covering his window, and it makes it SO dark. They look cute with how his room is decorated now, and down the line we can switch them out for something else if he wants.

I second Rachel R's recommendation for the Redi shades. We also got some of these from Amazon, and have loved them. We've had them for just over a year now, and as soon as we installed them, our twins started falling asleep more quickly. We use them even in the dead of winter for consistency of light quality. Cheap, easy to use, and effective - two thumbs up!

In our basement we use the honeycomb shade with the blackout feature. They are great. As for my sons room, I have wood blinds with dark blue curtains over them. It seems to do a decent job so far but not sure how it will work this summer, as he is just 1.

I just went through this and got 2 different kinds. I got the generic roll shade from Home Depot that they cut to size for my girls' room and got some curtains to go with it. For our room I got the cellular black out shades from JCPenney. I had to special order 2 of them and even with 68% off sale they were really expensive! I love them though and except for a little light that comes in on the sides, it blocks light and sound very well. They are also cordless. If you are willing to spend the money, these are your best bet.

I don't know the exact brand but I bought ours at Lowl's. They cost about $35 per blind. They have sort of a cloth texture. They are honeycombed or accordian like in design. Between the to layers of material is foil that blocks out the light. I think they are considered blinds because they have a pull string where shades tend to be on a roll. Anyway, they work great, I love them. You need to know the measurements on your window when you buy them because they are cut to fit inside the frame. A very small amount of light comes through on the sides. It is light enough we don't need a night light but dark enough to sleep.

Check out SelectBlinds.com. I bought thier honeycomb room-darkening shades for the kid's rooms in my new house and they work really well. That site always has deals and free shipping offers, on top of the fact that it's already cheaper because you measure and install yourself (which was easy for my husband and he's not even very handy!). You can also order free samples of the shades so you can be sure to get the right color. I bought the same shades from Budget Blinds for my old house and they were about 25% cheaper on SelectBlinds.com.

As I didn't want to deal with more holes in the wall and wanted some flexibility to take it down during darker times of the year I just bought the room darkening fabric at Joanns and tuck it over the current curtain rod...one day I will sew a pocket in it to actually hang on the rod..one day) I had tried some of the cheaper room darkening blinds in the past and they just ended up ripping out of the wall or getting stuck so they wouldn't roll up or down. And I am too thrifty (cheap?:) to purchase the more expensive ones so this was a very inexpensive and easy solution for me.
K.

We needed to battle the bright morning sun in our daughter's room, along with the townhome complex street lamp at night!
I got shades from domestications.com and also the curtains that you attach to the back of an existing curtain from Pottery Barn Kids.

For afternoon naps her room is the darkest one in the house!
Good luck!

Hi!
I'm not sure on pricing, as we got ours when we built our home and it was worked into our price, but we went through Budget Blinds and they were wonderful! The room darkening shades work great and still look very nice-they are the accordion type. Budget Blinds beat out others that we had come to give estimates, by quite a bit of money.
J. M

Hi S.,

I have room darkening shades in the bedrooms. I have a vinyl shade which come in both plain or with a fringed (scalloped ) edge. It keeps the room very dark. The outside is ivory or you can get them in colors. They do a great job to keep the light out.

They are available at Menards or any of those stores and also the catalog. That is where I bought mine. I think even K-Mart has them.

Good luck S. in finding what you are looking for.

D.

I agree with Michelle's post. JC Penney room darkening shades are the BEST!!!! I bought them through the catalog when they were 50% off. (They are often on sale)

The come in many different colors and do a great job.

The ONLY thing that I would suggest is to think about how you want the shades to fit in your windows. I followed the measuring instructions in the catalog and it didn't work for us. Our room gets a TON of direct afternoon sunlight and it's very bright. The shades fit inside the frame and the bright rays of sunshine came through the sides. WAY TOO BRIGHT!

I reordered them, resized them and now they fit on the outside of the windows, where there is about one-two inch coverage beyond the window. PERFECT!

Good Luck to you!

D. in milwaukee

When we remodeled our bed room we went to Home Depot and picked up Bali brand room darkening blinds. We got the 1" aluminum blind and they are great!! The room is dark in the middle of the day when the blinds is shut down. Before you go, measure the inside length and width of the window. Home Depot will need that info. Have fun and we hope that this works for you.

I can not remember the name of the room darken shades & curtians we got... either from Walmart or K-Mart (It think it is K-mart, cost a few more dollars then walmart but seemed like better material).

I decided not to change out the shades that we already have since installing them was a pain. We got the darkening curtians, cut them in half (depends on window size) and used fabric glue and glued them to the back of the shades (or the side of the shade that is facing the window). Can still easily pull them up and down without a problem.

We went this route due to saving money. It is working really well for us, I did this last spring and my daughter has not pulled 'but it is still light out and I don't want to go to bed.' We also did it for our room since we live so close to your neighbor and his side outdoor light shines right into our bedroom making night seem like early morning.

If you can afford it and didn't just get new blinds I would go with the darkening blinds but have no brand recommendation.

We found our through Pottery Barn Kids on-line and they have been a God-send as our daughters room used to get a lot of light and she is a very light sleeper. They have helped tremendously.

We got room blackening honeycomb shades from Home Depot for our kids rooms. The rooms get very dark. They are custom order so the fit is perfect and very easy to install.

Good luck!

we purchased a set of 'paper' room darkening shades from amazon (redi shades) they were about $30 for 6 shades! i hadn't had much luck previously, so i didn't want to spend a fortune if these didnt' work. and they work great!! we left up our original shades, then we put these up right behind them (so from the outside you still see the white shades and not black ones). they come with an adhesive strip on top to mount and then little clips to use when raising/lowering. they've lasted for over 2 years now and were so easy to mount.. we've been really pleased with them!

Hi S.,

I have always put JC Penney room darkening shades. They are vinyl and come in different colors. There are no chords. You can get a scalloped edge or straight edge. They are very reasonable and JC Penney usually has sales on them often.

Good luck.

This isn't cheap, but we got Warm Windows roman shades from Custom Expressions (they make and install curtains and window treatments). They are insulated roman shades that keep out the heat or cold, and have magnets to seal shut around the edges, keeping out the light as well as the heat and cold.

Most roller shades are going to have a gap all around the edges, through which light will pour. A cheaper solution than what we did would be to use room-darkening roller shades, and then a simple dark curtain over that. That's what we did in our children's rooms.

Home Depot carries the Hunter Douglas brand and they have some room darkening options, not sure of the cost though.

We have the room darkening shades from Home Depot and they work pretty well. Two warnings though--we have an "inside mount." You have to measure very precisely and hope for a HD employee who knows what they are doing when they cut the shade. I had to go back 3-4 times to get it the right size. Also, there are gaps on the side with an inside mount so I ended up putting up curtains too to fill in the gap. For our spare room I purchased inexpensive room darkening curtains from Target and just put them up with the spring loaded curtain rods. They work surprinsingly well. I don't know if they are still available because I think they might have been on clearance when I purchased them and they were only available in navy and burgundy, but I was surprised at how well they worked.