Room Darkening Beyond The Normal Room Darkening shades

[tbutler]

In 2006 we traveled to Alaska and spent the whole summer on the journey. When we arrived in Fairbanks I was working on the motor home and then realized it was 11 p.m. I had to force myself to give up the work and go inside to sleep! I also had to laugh at myself. It is hard to realize how daylight affects us. I wasn't tired at all. I'm sure it would have caught up with me eventually.

One of the things we saw in Alaska were numerous RVs with aluminum foil on their bedroom windows! I would imagine the bedroom was like a cave all the time. We used removable foam core board purchased at Wal-Mart to darken our bedroom. We had purchased it in 2001 when we moved into the motor home full-time. Cut to the height of our bedroom window and overlapped to accommodate the width of the panels, they are very effective room-darkening shades. Our first RV didn't have good room-darkening shades. Our present one has much better shades. Still, they weren't made for sleeping in the Alaska daylight that passes for night.

These panels are found in the art department and come in a variety of colors. If you want dark, the black panels are best. Three of them take care of the large window in our bedroom and an additional one cut to size covers the small window. They are easily stored next to a cabinet during the day or under the bed when not needed for a period of time. We had transferred ours from our first RV and never used them until we got to Alaska. Then we dug them out from under the bed and put them to work.

I like having something removable so the bedroom is bright during the day and really dark at night. We still use them when we are boondocking on a brightly lit parking lot. I hate the glimmer of a parking lot light twinkling through a string hole in the darkening shades when I am trying to sleep.

[j.barnum]

Tom a good idea.

What we did was just to take a couple of car sun screen aluminum shades and placed them between the pull down shades and the valance. they help keep the bedroom dark and cool during the summer and warmer in the winter. plus easy to remove fold and store.