Blackout Blinds for Long Summer Days

One of the joys of summer is sunshine, but sometimes summer delivers to much of a good thing. In midsummer the hours of sunlight may intrude into sleep time for you and other family members. It is for this reason that roller blinds, Roman blinds and Venetian blinds can be the difference between being alert and being sleep deprived.

As human beings, we are by nature programmed to sleep during times of darkness and engage in activities during the daylight hours. For most of human history people kept to that pattern until the demands of agriculture made it necessary to get up in the dark to feed animals and make the required preparations for being in the fields at dawn. But even then bedtime pretty much coincided with that of the chickens.

Modern life doesn't always allow us to follow natures plan for our sleep cycle. Often the midsummer morning sun intrudes into the bedroom before we have had our full eight hours while at other times the sun hasn't gone below the horizon when we must go to bed. In today's world the hours of sunlight and the hours of our work life do not always go hand and hand.

The answer is not to try and force ourselves to sleep in sunlight or to try finding a work schedule that meets the sun's changing schedule but instead to make our own artificial night. Perhaps, the easiest way to achieve this would be to paint over the window panes, but a much more aesthetically pleasing alternative would be window blinds combined with curtains.

Roller blinds are lengths of material rolled on a rod containing an interior spring. The blind can be pulled down when required and will retreat when given a sharp, quick pull. How adequately they will block sunlight will depend on how well they fit the windows and the density of the material.

Venetian blinds consist of a series of horizontal slats made of wood, metal or vinyl that can slightly overlap when the slats are turned parallel with the window. These blinds are unique in that they can regulate the amount of light in a room by not only being raised and lowered but also by the degree to which the slats are slanted.

Roman blinds are a hybrid of roller and Venetian blinds; they are made of material with slates sown into the material at intervals. Roman blinds fold as they are raised instead of rolling onto a rod.

Effective blackout blinds can be a simple solution to the annual problem of sunlight intruding upon sleeping hours as well as a year around solution to those who work third shift. For a small investment you can give your body what it wants: darkness in which to repair and replenish itself.

Carl Liver

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